Parse Google Spreadsheets

[cbk1994]

I wasn't planning on posting this as it's very simple but someone requested it, and it can be very useful .

This simple script will load a Google Docs spreadsheet and turn it into an array of rows/columns.

PHP Code:

public function parseSpreadsheet(url) {
  temp.req = requestURL(url);
  waitfor(req, "onReceiveData", 30);
  
  temp.rows = null;
  temp.lines = req.data;
  
  for (temp.line : lines) {
    temp.row = null;
    
    for (temp.column : line.tokenize(char(9))) {
      row.add(column);
    }
    
    rows.add(row);
  }
  
  return rows;
} 


To get the URL needed, from the Google Spreadsheet choose "Share" then "Publish as web page" at the top-right. Click "Start publishing" and optionally click "Automatically republish as I make changes". Then, from the drop-down list for "Get the link to share", choose "TXT (Plain text)" and copy the link given.



Example usage:

PHP Code:

function onCreated() {
  temp.url = "my_url";
  temp.rows = parseSpreadsheet(url);
  
  for (temp.row : rows) {
   echo(row);
  }
} 


I'm sure you can think up plenty of uses for this. The one I'm currently using it for on Era is a translation table—the spreadsheet is cached into a script-friendly file which is sent to players on login and can be used for translating text.