Batch updating cells can exceed quota for reading

GitHub Issues are for bugs and feature requests.

Environment info

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.11.6 Python version: 2.7.14 gspread version: 3.0.1

Steps to reproduce

1. Use code similar to what is shown in the Docs under Updating Cells

Within a loop where I’m looking for cells to update, add any to a list:

if needs_update == True:
	updated_cell = wks.cell( row_num, col_num )
	updated_cell.value = new_valuer
	cells_to_update.append( updated_cell )

At the end of the script, I will send the list to be batch updated:

wks.update_cells( cells_to_update )

1. The problem occurs BEFORE I get to the update_cells() call. I get a “code 429” and “Quota exceeded for quota group ‘ReadGroup’ and limit ‘USER-100s’ of service ‘sheets.googleapis.com’”

2. I believe what’s happening is that every time I try to fetch a cell instance by doing updated_cell = wks.cell( row_num, col_num ), the .cell() method runs self.spreadsheet.values_get(), which results in an API call.

So, if I’m understanding this correctly, for every cell I want to update, I will have to make one API call to read its value. Hundreds of cells to update? Hundreds of API calls to read. All these API calls at once causes me to exceed the “ReadGroup” quota limit.

Is there a way to suppress this? A way to get a Cell instance without an API call? Or perhaps a way to batch read a list of cells in one API call?

[ndevenish]

I think I’ve got this same need, also ran into read quota throttles when repeatedly calling .get_cell. I then was going to try building a list of Cell objects to pass to update cells but thanks to this thread know that apparently behaves unexpectedly.

I’ve avoided repeated reads by reading the whole sheet at once, but want to update an effectively random sample of cells that may or may not be partially contiguous - I’d also like to avoid just bulk updating the whole sheet for versioning if possible, unless that’s the right way to approach this.

@Kirkman’s modification seems to work for what I need; one call updating lots of disparate things. Is this a good way to approach the problem or is there a better way to do it?

Should we be putting together a pull request for this?

[burnash]

@taewookim correct,

Since #731 / v3.3.0 there are new methods for batch fetching or batch updating cell values:

Worksheet.batch_get()

Example:

worksheet.batch_get(['A1:B2', 'F12'])

– returns list of ValueRange objects (which are in turn lists of lists).

Worksheet.batch_update()

Example:

worksheet.batch_update([{
    'range': 'A1:B1',
    'values': [['42', '43']],
}, {
    'range': 'my_range',
    'values': [['44', '45']],
}])

In both examples worksheet is an instance of the Worksheet class.

More examples will follow in the docs.