I think a coda API as you plan is terrific. However, that will largely limit use to extreme power users and/or businesses.
Could you by chance develop a configurable import function that works with any RESTful APi interface from data sources and lets the user map the fields from that RESTful API to a table in coda? That would open up a huge number of data sources to be accessible to those who are sophisticated users but may not have the experience and resources to write and maintain an app to interact with a coda API.
Thanks Richard! This is great feedback and a great idea! I’ll pass it forward to the team and we’ll definitely keep it in mind as we go deeper in our API efforts. Could you tell me more about the RESTful APIs you’d like to connect to and what type of functionality you’re hoping for with an “import function”?
In the meantime, have you tried out our Zapier integration? One trigger that might give you some of this power is the Webhook by Zapier trigger. You can set up a Catch Hook or poll a URL for new entries. We’ve used it for moving feedback from Intercom (which we use for customer support) into a customer feedback database.
I spent a good bit of time trying the Zapier integration and considering what might be good capabilities for import capabilities.
Regarding Zapier integration, it works well but it is only able to import one row at a time. So that works well for importing new items as they arise, but it is not really useful for importing an existing set of data. Also even if it were possible to import multiple rows, the Zapier cost structure is on the order of about 1-2 cents per record imported. That would not be ideal if my goal is to regularly import data sets with 1,000 or more records. My work involves commentary/annotation of academic citations in medicine, where such datasets are common and freely accessible to the public, such as for example the National Library of Medicine Pubmed database; it would be terrific to be able to include such data in a Coda project.
That said, I think I can suggest a plan for data import which is simpler than my original suggestion and which would generalize to use cases of many other Coda users. May I suggest that in addition to “Import CSV” to a table, adding “Import XML” and “Import JSON” would be a tremendous help. While importing from a local file would be workable, even better would be the ability to also enter the URL of a file containing XML or JSON data and to save “Favorite” URL locations for such data. This would make it easy to regularly update data from all sorts of public databases which contain information in these formats. I believe this would be of very wide interest for all sorts of users of Coda.
Thanks Richard and Stephen, this is great feedback and I’ll pass along to the rest of the team.
In the meantime, if folks on the thread are interested in getting early access to our API, please don’t hesitate to send me a direct message and I’ll get you hooked up!