UserPreferences

GoogleVisualizationApi

  1. Figuring out the Google Visualization API
    1. Embedding the Visualization Gadget in a GSheet
    2. Embedding a visualization gadget in a web page
    3. Relationship to Google Gadgets
    4. Google Gadget to display ProgrammableWeb stats
    5. Misc. Points
    6. Outstanding Questions

Figuring out the Google Visualization API

During this week, I've been getting up to speed on the [WWW]Google Visualization API:

The first part of my study was to work through [WWW]Developers Guide - Google Visualization API. You need to copy and paste and substitute a DATA_SOURCE_URL, which you can get from a spreadsheet by inserting a gadget (which in turns gets you a URL.) My implementation of the tutorial is http://mashupguide.net/PW/2008/03/gvisualization/helloworld.html. The spreadsheet that is the data source is http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pYxyro01gAliwKMr__j9uEw -- and the corresponding DATA_SOURCE_URL is http://spreadsheets.google.com/tq?key=pYxyro01gAliwKMr__j9uEw&gid=0.

It's useful to compare the variant URLs for data sources:

Although the documentation mentions that "The Google Visualization API lets you access multiple sources", note the answer to [WWW]What data sources can I access using the Visualization API?:

I'll be on the lookout for some official documentation for the data source API so that I can use or implement a data source other than Google Spreadsheet. [WWW]Query Language Reference (Version 0.6) - Google Visualization API - Google Code documents part of the data source API -- the query language that you will have to implement.

Embedding the Visualization Gadget in a GSheet

[WWW]Google Visualization API Gadget Gallery - Google Visualization API - Google Code is a showcase for what people have done with these gadgets so far.

If you take a look at [WWW]my test spreadsheet, you'll see a bunch of embedded visualization gadgets.

How to get started with visualization gadgets? Read [WWW]Using Visualization Gadgets - Google Visualization API to learn how to embed a visualization gadget into a GSheet, specifically the sample gadget specified by http://www.google.com/ig/modules/simple-table.xml

Embedding a visualization gadget in a web page

Relationship to Google Gadgets

Google Visualization Gadgets are related to related to [WWW]Google Gadgets though I'm not totally clear on the relationship between the two. It seems that one can embed any visualization gadgets into iGoogle, but can you embed any regular Google gadget into a GSheet? I'm not sure what the answer is right now.

Google Gadget to display ProgrammableWeb stats

I wrote a Google Gadget to display the number of current APIs listed on ProgrammableWeb: http://mashupguide.net/PW/2008/03/ggadgets/ProgrammableWeb.xml To use it you need to get an API key for PW by following instructions at [WWW]ProgrammableWeb API: Overview.

My quest: to embed this gadget into a GSheet. The problem is that when I try to insert the gadget into a GSheet, I get an error:

Why does this gadget work in the context of iGoogle but not in GSheet? I think that I've nailed down a specific bug in how a visualization gadget interacts with Gsheet. http://mashupguide.net/PW/2008/03/gvisualization/dynamichelloworld.xml works but http://mashupguide.net/PW/2008/03/gvisualization/dynamichelloworld_a.xml gives rise to the above error message. (Both work in the iGoogle context.) The second gadget includes an extra 

  <UserPref name="PW_API_KEY" 
     display_name="API key for ProgrammableWeb"
     datatype="string"
     required="true">
  </UserPref>

I wouldn't think that simply defining an extra UserPref should cause this error message -- and hence, there is a bug.

Misc. Points

Outstanding Questions