Mashing Up Google Apps Tony Hirst Dept of Communication and Systems The Open University Wiring Before http://www.flickr.com/photos/kelp/4894023263

Google Apps as a mashup environment

(Interaction and Display) Native Functions Google Apps Script APIs

Heavy lifting done by pre-existing applications or code libraries with each stage acting on naturally expressed representations of data from the preceding stage in the pipeline Mashups as pipelines…

Google Apps as a mashup environment Scripted integration of Google Apps Glue in “free form” data driven mashups

Scripted integration of Google Apps

‘ We have a spreadsheet of OU broadcast campaigns – can you get them into a calendar?’

Google spreadsheet + Google Apps Script Into Google Calendar

Google Apps Script provides a way of working with representations that have a natural expression in a user facing application

http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.org.uk/mashe/category/google-apps/ http://bit.ly/gqAX17 Martin Hawksey's JISC RSC MASHe blog

Collect/backup tweets in a Google Spreadsheet [Twitteralytics v2] Linking a Google Form with data from the responses in the Spreadsheet [Event/Resource Booking] gEVS – An idea for a Google Form/Visualization mashup for electronic voting The best Google Spreadsheet Event Manager (w/h Sites, Contact, Calendar integration) ever, ever, ever Convert time stamped data to timed-text (XML) subtitle format using Google Spreadsheet Script

Glue in “free form” data driven mashups

Google spreadsheet Google Apps script Google Visualisation API Google Spreadsheets as a mashup environment

Getting stuff in...

Creating a database on the fly…

Formulae

= googlelookup ("Brazil", "capital")

linked data Linked Data

= OUdata_courses ( coursecode , [ properties] )

function OUdata_courses(cc,props) { var args = _OUdata_SPARQL(‘courses’,cc,props) var sparqlResult = UrlFetchApp.fetch( 'http://data-gov.tw.rpi.edu/ws/sparqlproxy.php', {method: 'post', payload: args} ); return _handleSPARQLresult( sparqlResult ); }

Google Spreadsheets as a database

=QUERY('ISO Country Codes'!A2:B268, "select A,B where A contains 'FRANCE' limit 1")))

"Events, dear boy, events..."

...getting stuff out

DataStore Explorer

The art of the mashup lies in breaking a problem down into a series of discrete functional steps, each of which can be handled by something that already exists.

Creating an effective mashup requires cunning, laziness, and a playful attitude…

… which is to say, a willingness to use as building blocks things that may not have originally been intended as such, such as Google Apps…

@psychemedia http://blog.ouseful.info