Google Apps Script can interact with APIs from all over the web. This guide shows how to work with different types of APIs in your scripts.
Connect to public APIs
You can use the UrlFetch
service to make
API requests directly.
The following example uses the GitHub API to search for repositories with 100 or more stars that mention "Apps Script". This API request does not require authorization or an API key.
var
query
=
'"Apps Script" stars:">=100"'
;
var
url
=
'https://api.github.com/search/repositories'
+
'?sort=stars'
+
'&q='
+
encodeURIComponent
(
query
);
var
response
=
UrlFetchApp
.
fetch
(
url
,
{
'muteHttpExceptions'
:
true
});
Logger
.
log
(
response
);
Make requests to services with OAuth
APIs that act on behalf of a user usually require authorization, often using the OAuth protocol . Apps Script doesn't provide built-in support for the protocol, but there are open source libraries you can use to perform the OAuth flow and send the credentials with your requests:
- OAuth1 for Apps Script : Compatible with OAuth 1.0 and 1.0a.
- OAuth2 for Apps Script : Compatible with OAuth2.
Work with JSON
Working with JSON objects is similar to working with XML, except that parsing or encoding a JSON object is much easier.
If the API being requested returns a raw JSON response for a request, the JSON
string response can be accessed using the method HTTPResponse.getContentText()
.
Once this string is retrieved, simply call JSON.parse()
on the string to get a
native object representation.
//
Make
request
to
API
and
get
response
before
this
point
.
var
json
=
response
.
getContentText
();
var
data
=
JSON
.
parse
(
json
);
Logger
.
log
(
data
.
title
);
Likewise, to make a string representation of a JavaScript object in order to
make a request, use JSON.stringify()
.
var
data
=
{
'entry'
:
{
'group'
:
{
'title'
:
'Dog Skateboarding'
,
'description'
:
'My dog gets some serious air'
},
'keywords'
:
'dog, skateboard'
}
}
var
payload
=
JSON
.
stringify
(
data
);
//
Make
request
to
API
with
payload
after
this
point
.
Parse XML
If an external API returns a raw XML response for a request, you can access the
XML response using the method HTTPResponse.getContentText()
.
//
Make
request
to
API
and
get
response
before
this
point
.
var
xml
=
response
.
getContentText
();
var
doc
=
XmlService
.
parse
(
xml
);
When making XML requests to an API, construct the XML to send by using
the XmlService
methods.
var
root
=
XmlService
.
createElement
(
'entry'
)
.
setAttribute
(
'keywords'
,
'dog, skateboard'
);
var
group
=
XmlService
.
createElement
(
'group'
)
.
setAttribute
(
'title'
,
'Dog Skateboarding'
);
.
setAttribute
(
'description'
,
'My dog gets some serious air'
);
root
.
addContent
(
group
);
var
document
=
XmlService
.
createDocument
(
root
);
var
payload
=
XmlService
.
getPrettyFormat
()
.
format
(
document
);
//
Make
request
to
API
with
payload
after
this
point
.
