Since spreadsheets and databases are pretty much the same thing, I thought it would make sense to have a web publishing platform built on Google Spreadsheet. After taking a look around, I’m having difficulty finding anything.
I checked out the Google Spreadsheet API, and they seem to have all the functionality you need to build such an app. The only solutions I could find, however, were written for developers:
- Build a Spreadsheet Driven Website with YUI, YQL, and Google Docs
- Dynamic FAQ Section with jQuery, YQL, and Google Docs
- Using the Google Spreadsheet API to build a Recommended Reading List
- Using Google Docs as an Online Database
- Using Google Spreadsheets as a Database
There’s even Tabletop, which takes Google Spreadsheets and converts content to Javascript for you. Still, no simple solution for publishing a widget or webpage yourself.
This slideshow, Google Spreadsheet as a Web Application Data Prototyping highlights some of the pros and cons of using Google Spreadsheet as your database, and how the author implemented it himself.
Pros – Spreadsheet architecture is similar to relational database, changing cell/column data is easy, clients understand spreadsheet, importing data is easy, quick prototyping.
Cons – Time consuming, not an end solution.
What if you could publish websites quickly from a Google Spreadsheet so it wasn’t time consuming? And what if anyone could use Google Spreadsheet, or a similar spreadsheet app, to act as the primary database that runs a simple website?
That would be cool.
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