Quickest update methods

I am using this API in a chunk of software for automated testing and uploading resulting data to a spreadsheet to share.

I am noticing some lag on uploads and I can easily work around it, but I want to make sure I am not doing it wrong or there is a much quicker way. Essentially I am updating a cell at a time. The row can change often so I figured it would be easier to go by row number over cell name like “A1”.

workSheet.update_cell(conInfo[0],1,time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", conInfo[1]))
workSheet.update_cell(conInfo[0],2,conInfo[2])
workSheet.update_cell(conInfo[0],3,conInfo[3])
workSheet.update_cell(conInfo[0],4,conInfo[4])

[TravisJoe]

Yes, this is many times faster, even with needing to get the objects first from the spreadsheet.

I included a chunk of my code just in case it helps others. Basically I have a queue of value that needs to get uploaded. One gets pulled off, I get the cell objects for that row, update the values from the from the queue tuple, and then upload the cell list.

row = str(queueReturn[1])
range_build = 'A' + row + ':E' + row

cell_list = workSheet.range(range_build)

cell_list[0].value = time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", queueReturn[2])
cell_list[1].value = queueReturn[3]
cell_list[2].value = queueReturn[4]
cell_list[3].value = queueReturn[5]
if queueReturn[6] is None:
         cell_list[4].value = queueReturn[6]
else:
         cell_list[4].value = time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", queueReturn[6])

workSheet.update_cells(cell_list)

[burnash]

Hi Travis,

If I get it right, you’re doing a bulk cells update and in this case the Worksheet.update_cells can be much faster.

It works this way:

# Select a cell range
cell_list = worksheet.range('A1:A7')

# Update values
for cell in cell_list:
    cell.value = "O_o"

# Send update in batch mode
worksheet.update_cells(cell_list)

It is faster because there’s only one Google API call in case of update_cells (contrary to one API call for each update_cell call). Since Spreadsheets API is not very swift, the less API calls you make the faster it goes.