Hello all - I’m new to Appsheet, and I’m learning on the fly. Are there any best practices around appending into an appsheet database?
I get new flat files (CSVs) each week for that week’s data that I need to add to the app and update. Can someone please guide me with best practices?
First, if you are building your app using the AppSheet Database as a datasource, know that this feature is very new and in preview only. It has some issues, as its under development, and there is no known timeline at the moment for when it will be considered “live” - for normal app use. If you have a need to get a “live” app out to users in the next few months, you likely should consider an alternative datasource such as Google sheets or a database.
Your title states “FROM Google sheets”. If your CSV files are exported from an existing Google sheet, you might want to look into the possibility of pulling that source Google sheet directly into your app. Then you wouldn’t need a CSV file at all - you’d already have the data! It may be that the sheet can be used as is or maybe only needs some minor adjustments to be used. You can use Security Filters to reduce the data rows to only what’s needed. Then you can create a copy process to retrieve the desired columns of info.
If you must use the CSV files, you have some choices:
I hope this helps!
AppSheet Data Importer
It’s also possible to manually Import a CSV file via the app itself. That feature is not optimal, but there are compensatory techniques if it doesn’t meet your need.
Regardless of your app’s data source (e.g., AppSheet database or otherwise), this should be possible using the AppSheet API from an Apps Script script.
I actually looked at the list of actions available just for this reason and totally missed that option!
