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franciscop
drive-db
JavaScript2015–2023
franciscop / drive-db · Archived

drive-db

:bar_chart: Use Google Drive spreadsheets as a simple database

Data & DatabasesProductivity
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
3Distinct people
18Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
821GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

:bar_chart: Use Google Drive spreadsheets as a simple database

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

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Also in these discussions

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This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year18 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2015-01-19 22:23:11 UTC to 2023-02-27 01:24:15 UTC.

02462015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments20152016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 2 submissions, 1 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 1 submissions, 6 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2023

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC321
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC716
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

18 sources
franciscop·Feb 27, 2023
Ah nice memories, one of my first open source projects was to take a Google Sheet and convert it into a lightweight "database", basically parse the data and parse it into a big array of JSON data that could be used in any website: const data = await driveDb('sheet-id'); console.log(data); // [{ name: 'John', age: 31 }, { name: 'Sarah', age: 27 }, ...] https://github.com/franciscop/drive-db/ It was born very similarly to how the article describes it. For low-amount of data, a spreadsheet is IMHO a much better low-tech collaborative tool than a database.
In A Relational Spreadsheet
franciscop·Jul 7, 2020
This looks great! I made a while back a library[1] to do this, but of course you still have to code on top of it (which is what I wanted). Your project makes it very easy for everyone to get started and not only those who know how to code, props on launching it. Are you using Node.js? Would love some feedback on my lib since it seems we are doing the same thing for different user types! [1] https://github.com/franciscop/drive-db
In Show HN: SheetUI – Turn Google Sheets into Web Pages
franciscop·May 10, 2020
The first version of https://makersupv.com/ was made with Google Drive as well: - There was a spreadsheet with the list of articles and some meta-information such as publication date, "published" flag, etc. This was then extracted with https://github.com/franciscop/drive-db on a Node.js backend. - Then each article was written as a single google docs document, so we could edit them collaboratively. Meta: The front-end was built with https://picnicss.com/, which is a library I also created for this project.
In My blog is now generated by Google Docs
franciscop·Sep 26, 2018
I did something similar back in 2013-2014 for the initial Makers UPV blog[1], which was much later migrated to Ghost. The underlying technology we used is drive-db[2], a library I made to use a spreadsheet as the database. Then just used an obscure-ish Google docs API to retrieve each article content. When you wanted to publish an article, you had to create the doc, publish to the web and copy the link to the spreadsheet. This looks like a very well put together product of the hacky solution I did back in the day, so kudos! Edit: the best feature of this is that several people can collaborate in real time on an article! Something that Wordpress doesn't have and was used a lot for us in the beginning. [1] https://makersupv.com/ [2] https://github.com/FranciscoP/drive-db
In Show HN: You Don't Need WordPress – Create a Blog With Only Google Docs
j_s·Nov 3, 2017
Google Spreadsheets and Python | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13668916 (2017Feb:140comments) ・SQL into Sheets - http://pastebin.com/ACwqc5um ・LibreOffice Calc server - https://github.com/robsco-git/spreadsheet_server ・Sheets API (JS) - http://chriszarate.github.io/sheetrock/ | https://github.com/theoephraim/node-google-spreadsheet ・Grunt / Jekyll - https://github.com/stpe/grunt-gss-to-json ・simple read-only (JS) - https://github.com/franciscop/drive-db | https://github.com/digplan/gsheet-web ・auth proxy (Golang) - https://github.com/VLO-GDA/server-app
In Connecting to Google Sheets with Python
franciscop·Jul 31, 2017
It seems everyone is recommending books/courses/similar. I'll go the other way around. This is difficult for me to say, but I think I am an expert in CSS+JS. I know the inner workings and really advanced things of CSS, and while JS API is quite broader I know some in-depth JS APIs that your average developer doesn't even know exists. I got to this point first in CSS and then with JS by making side projects and focus each one on a different advanced concept. I will also say it in 1st person as I experienced it as it might sound insulting otherwise: - Don't get attached to my code. My code is crap. My 6+ months old code is a lot more crap. Always think ways of improving it. Sidenote: try to make it as standard of possible. Initially I did things my way until my open source started to get some traction and it was a mess. - Once I got past th
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e basics and mid-level, what I did to keep up learning was to try to focus each small side project around a technology I wanted to learn in-depth. Examples: Umbrella JS[1] is about a modular codebase, Superdom [2] is about Proxy, drive-db [3] is about talking with external APIs and DB design, etc. - Push the limits on the technology on each project. Don't just do the basics and call it a day, try to find what is possible and what is not. Examples: Umbrella JS'[1] performance is similar to jQuery thanks to using the prototype properly, Superdom's [2] Proxies are recursive-ly, drive-db [3] is cached for maximum performance, etc. - If I don't use it no one will. Publish it for feedback after it is polished from feedback from different projects. Focus on the positive comments to keep going and on the negative ones to keep improving. Because I know my code is crap, when someone says X is quite bad I agree on principle and find a way to fix it or prove to myself that it _was_ the right approach. Examples: Umbrella JS initial code wasn't good for the different ways of importing it, so I added a UMD-ish kind of thing. Superdom was really buggy so I had to write a few tests all around it. drive-db was not good for promises-based code so I converted it to ES7. There is something I haven't made which I am trying now that it's reading and understanding large, public projects such as Ghost. I have done something similar while contracting, but those closed-source project's code is IMHO generally messier and you are normally trying to go for business requirements, not really focusing on pleasure/learning so much. [1] https://umbrellajs.com/ [2] https://superdom.site/ [3] https://github.com/franciscop/drive-db
In Ask HN: Resources for learning advanced JavaScript and React
franciscop·Apr 6, 2017
As a dev of an unrelated lib who cares about making good documentation this is a really valuable comment; I'm guilty of doing this partially for example in https://github.com/franciscop/drive-db where I link to MongoDB platform for the more advanced selectors. In my experience good documentation takes around 3x-5x of the time of writing the code (excluding tests and tutorials), so while I hate seeing libraries without a decent documentation I totally understand it. Edit: also it is in alpha, where writing documentation many times backfires you and you have to remove large pieces of it wasting your time.
In Planck.js – JavaScript rewrite of Box2D physics library
franciscop·Feb 17, 2017Submission

Ask HN: Why some stories rise while others go unnoticed?

I just saw this story "Google Spreadsheets and Python." in the #1 of HN. I made a library that does almost the same for Node.js ( https://github.com/franciscop/drive-db ) but it didn't get so much attention compared to it [1]. So my question is, what influences on the ranking/votes of the stories? I'm not complaining, just curious, this is my best guess: - Tech: innovative, quality, etc - Landing page/PR (or "hacker PR") - Company name behind it - People you know in the industry+silicon valley? - What else? I have some ideas as I've landed few projects on the front-page of HN, but somehow it seems quite random. I have observed a direct relationship with the mentioned points and appraisal/hate in the comments, but not with the vote count. So does anyone have anything to add? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8914508
5 points · Open discussion
franciscop·Nov 15, 2016
* Picnic CSS: a simple css library. I use it for both small projects from the CDN as medium projects with the SASS that I have carefully built: http://picnicss.com/ * cookies.js, a simple cookies library that uses a getter/setter style that I (and many people) like more. I'm considering taking the format and extend some other libraries like store.js. https://github.com/franciscop/cookies.js * drive-db, a tool that converts a Google spreadsheet into a small database for Node.js: https://github.com/franciscop/drive-db
In Ask HN: What simple tools or products are you most proud of making?
franciscop·Jan 16, 2016Submission

Ask HN: GitHub thinks I'm a bot; what about my projects?

Github thinks that I'm a bot as they stated in big, red letters: > One of our mostly harmless robots seems to think you are not a human. > Because of that, it’s hidden your profile from the public. If you really are human, please contact support to have your profile reinstated. We promise we won’t require DNA proof of your humanity. I get that, but then I open any of my projects in Incognito mode and they are all returning 404. Try it: - Drive DB https://github.com/franciscop/drive-db 234 stars - I Am Not A Lawyer https://github.com/franciscop/ianal 74 stars Those two, for example, are listed in NPM. I have other projects listed in Bower. Fortunately I don't have anything in my personal account on jsdelivr, but I could. Does anyone know what happens to the NPM, Bower and jsdelivr when this happens? I am waiting for resolution after conta
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cting Github, but it can take any random number of hours from past experiences. This could happen to anyone. On the good side, the public "organization" repositories seem to be doing just fine: - Picnic CSS http://github.com/picnicss/picnic 836 stars
8 points · Open discussion

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