Agent that syncs pods and Google Sheets

[pheyvaer]

Pitch

A lot of users use Google Sheets to view and edit data. This data can be stored in Google Sheets itself or it can be coming from an external data source such as a MySQL database or MongoDB. So far, there is no solution that exists that allows doing this with data in Solid pods. This challenge focuses on the agent/backend part of a solution for this problem.

Desired solution

The solution is a server application that

• Reads data from a Solid pod and updates a Google Sheet.
• Reads data from a Google Sheets and updates the data in a Solid pod.
• Allows users to configure it via a YAML file.

For this challenge, we only consider public resources on a pod and public Google Sheets.

Acceptance criteria

1. There exists a public resource on the user's pod that they want to sync.
2. The user opens a new Google Sheet.
3. The user updates the config file with
   • Info about the Google Sheet.
   • Info about the pod resource.
   • SPARQL query that determines what data is selected from the resource and shown in a table.
4. The user starts the server application.
5. The Google Sheets is initially filled with the data from the resource.
6. The user updates a field in the Google Sheets.
7. The application writes the changes to the resource.
8. The user manually checks the resource and sees the changes.

We tackle the following in challenge https://github.com/SolidLabResearch/Challenges/issues/123:

1. Steps 1 - 8 of above.
2. The user updates the resource via another app or manually.
3. The application updates the Google Sheet.

Pointers

• Google Sheets API
• Google API Node.js Client
• Solid Agent
• Comunica to query pods.

Scenarios

• https://github.com/SolidLabResearch/Challenges/issues/119

[pheyvaer]

@bjdmeest Everything for this challenge is done. I included all requirements for completion directly in the corresponding PR #121 for the report. Can you have a look at that? Thanks!

[pheyvaer]

You find the report for this challenge here.