[jedschmidt]

I really like the idea of using Google Spreadsheets as a quick and familiar GUI for entry or querying on data sets, as long as you understand the tradeoffs (write latency isn't great and they max out at 400,000 cells).

But this is especially nice when you build a layer on top of Google reduces lock-in, instead of adding another proprietary API. This is what I did with sheet-down[1], which turns a Google Spreadsheet into a LevelDB-compatible data store that can be swapped out with a file system or other compatible backend[2] once you outgrow Google.

[1] https://github.com/jed/sheet-down

[2] https://github.com/rvagg/node-levelup/wiki/Modules#storage

[bradleyland]

How do you handle type constraints? For example, how do you prevent users from inputing text in to number fields? I know Google Sheets has validators, but I don't know of any way to restrict someone from changing those validations while also providing the ability to input data.

Really curious, because I'd love to use something like this in our app.

[jedschmidt]

My situation is for an intranet environment, so I suppose I could just ask nicely that they don't change validations. But chances are most of my target users aren't familiar enough with Google Spreadsheets to even get that far.

[donpinkus]

They upped the limit from 400,000 cells - I think it's around 2M now, will try to find the source