Building a game database with Coda API

Hi there,
We are building a tool for our videogames and we are thinking to try having coda in the process
The idea is to have use the API from our game dev environment (we are using Unity) to get the data and generate classes that store those data, with the correct type : string, float, enum, etc.
We have something working with google spreadsheet where each tab is a database table. Actually, this is ok and working quite well but a bit time consuming: we have to add an extra tab where we describe each column format.

  • I am sure the UX for us to create and manipulate the data can be much more pleasant in Coda than in a spreadsheet.

I have made a simple Coda doc with 2 tables :

  • a characters table
  • an animation table
    in the character table I have a lookup from the animation table with multiple animation possible for each row.

So, here are my suggestions about the API, which is a bit limited currently.
What I’d like :

  • a way to know what data format each column is in. The information is not sent in the API (or if it is I don’t see it in the column request)
  • even better, a single row request where I can have first the column informations so that I don’t need a separate request to get the column informations
  • for columns that lookup from another table, is there any way of getting directly the data inside the row request, maybe as a nested row?

thank you :slight_smile:

Hey @Utku_Kaplan, cool to hear what you’re doing to coordinate game development!

We’ve noted your suggestions for exposing column formats and expanding of nested row references. For your second point, I think these will have to remain as two separate endpoints, but you should be able to cache column info as that probably won’t change that often.

Hi Oleg, thanks for your reply.
I’d be happy to play with that then :slight_smile:

I’d like to share with you an exemple of tool we considered using before doing our own stuff based on google doc : http://castledb.org
you can create your tables and everything is store as a Json file, and of course, you can have nested data.
There were a few pain points that made us not to use it though.

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