Search API Connector Documentation

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Quick Start

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byAna
< Knowledge Base
If the add-on appears frozen or unresponsive, please check the first item in the troubleshooting guide (“Add-on Buttons & Menus Don’t Work”)

For this quick start, we’ll walk through how to use the API Connector add-on for Google Sheets, using an example request from the iTunes Search API.

SUPER QUICK START>>To get started immediately, just enter the following example URL into the API URL Path, set an output sheet and click Run:

https://itunes.apple.com/search?term=radiohead

That’s it! But if you’d like more detail, read on for step by step instructions.

CONTENTS

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

Click here to install the API Connector add-on from the Google Marketplace.

STEP 1: ADD NEW API REQUEST

After installing the plugin in Google Sheets, click Add-ons > API Connector > Open
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STEP 2: CONFIGURE YOUR API REQUEST

A window will open on the right side of your browser. In the Create tab, leave the Method as GET. Under API URL path, enter the following API URL:

https://itunes.apple.com/search?term=radiohead
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This API doesn’t require any headers, so just leave that section blank. This is an open, public API, so you can also skip the Authentication section.

STEP 3: CHOOSE DESTINATION SHEET

Create a new sheet in your workbook. You can name it anything but here we’ll call it “iTunes”. Click ‘Set current’ to set this sheet as the data destination.

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Note that the tab must exist before you can choose it as a destination; if you type in a sheet name that doesn’t exist yet, you’ll receive an error message prompting you to retry.

STEP 4: NAME AND RUN

Again we’ll name the request “iTunes”. Click Run.

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STEP 5: VIEW THE OUTPUT

Following the above steps, you should now be able to see music data from the iTunes API in your own sheet.

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STEP 6: CUSTOMIZE YOUR REQUEST

Now, go forth and enter in your own API requests! Experiment with your own API URLs (this beginner-friendly list of open APIs is a good place to start), or follow the documentation to:

API CONNECTOR DEMO VIDEO

Check here for an introduction to API Connector in video form:

QUESTIONS?

Please leave a comment below or in the API Connector user community. You’ll receive a response shortly!

14 thoughts on “Quick Start”

  1. hello there.
    I’m using an API in a site called Bling. I’m trying to get all my products on google sheets.
    The resquest runs without any error, but it only gets the first 100 products (1st page on the system website)
    There is something I can do about it?

    Thanks!

    Reply

    • Hi Urian, API Connector displays all records returned from the API. Most likely your API limits the number of records in a single response (this is called “pagination”). There’s some info on this in the troubleshooting documentation, but basically you need to check Bling’s API documentation for how to receive additional records. There’s probably some query string you need to adjust to receive the next 100.

      Reply

    • When you work with GraphQL APIs, you add parameters to a “query” query string (documentation). For example if we’re pulling from the Countries GraphQL API, the graphQL query looks like this:

      { country(code: "BR") {
    name
    native
    emoji
    currency
    languages {
      code
      name
    }  } }

      You can run this in API Connector like this:
      1) Add that whole block into your sheet, say cell A1 of sheet called Input
      2) Now in cell A2, add the following formula: =ENCODEURL(A1). This will encode the whole query so we can add it to the end of the URL.
      3) Now in API Connector, enter the following API Request URL: https://countries.trevorblades.com/?query=+++Input!A2+++
      4) Click Run and you’ll see the results populate your sheet.

      Reply

  5. Thank you for this, this was so useful.
    When I run my request, no matter the configuration, it only produces maximum 26 rows of data – significantly less than there actually are in Facebook. Could you please help? Thank you!

    Reply

  6. At the moment my Google Sheet has columns “data » actions » 1 » action_type” and “data » actions » 1 » value”. This makes linking to Google Data Studio quite difficult because it doesn’t simply say “ad_name – 3 link_clicks” for example.

    Is there a way to update the output so there is a designated column for each “action_type” e.g. “link_clicks”, and then the value, as is the case with “data » impressions”?

    I appreciate any help.

    Reply

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