Google Sheets

This page contains the setup guide and reference information for the Google Sheets source connector.

info

The Google Sheets source connector pulls data from a single Google Sheets spreadsheet. Each sheet (tab) within a spreadsheet can be replicated. To replicate multiple spreadsheets, set up multiple Google Sheets source connectors in your Airbyte instance. No other files in your Google Drive are accessed.

Prerequisites

• Spreadsheet Link - The link to the Google spreadsheet you want to sync.
• For Airbyte Cloud A Google Workspace user with access to the spreadsheet
• For Airbyte Open Source:
• A GCP project
• Enable the Google Sheets API in your GCP project
• Service Account Key with access to the Spreadsheet you want to replicate

Setup guide

The Google Sheets source connector supports authentication via either OAuth or Service Account Key Authentication.

For Airbyte Cloud users, we highly recommend using OAuth, as it significantly simplifies the setup process and allows you to authenticate directly from the Airbyte UI.

For Airbyte Open Source users, we recommend using Service Account Key Authentication. Follow the steps below to create a service account, generate a key, and enable the Google Sheets API.

note

If you prefer to use OAuth for authentication with Airbyte Open Source, you can follow Google's OAuth instructions to create an authentication app. Be sure to set the scopes to https://www.googleapis.com/auth/spreadsheets.readonly. You will need to obtain your client ID, client secret, and refresh token for the connector setup.

Set up the service account key (Airbyte Open Source)

Create a service account

1. Open the Service Accounts page in your Google Cloud console.
2. Select an existing project, or create a new project.
3. At the top of the page, click + Create service account.
4. Enter a name and description for the service account, then click Create and Continue.
5. Under Service account permissions, select the roles to grant to the service account, then click Continue. We recommend the Viewer role.

Generate a key

1. Go to the API Console/Credentials page and click on the email address of the service account you just created.
2. In the Keys tab, click + Add key, then click Create new key.
3. Select JSON as the Key type. This will generate and download the JSON key file that you'll use for authentication. Click Continue.

Enable the Google Sheets API

1. Go to the API Console/Library page.
2. Make sure you have selected the correct project from the top.
3. Find and select the Google Sheets API.
4. Click ENABLE.

If your spreadsheet is viewable by anyone with its link, no further action is needed. If not, give your Service account access to your spreadsheet.

Set up the Google Sheets source connector in Airbyte

To set up Google Sheets as a source in Airbyte Cloud:

1. Log in to your Airbyte Cloud or Airbyte Open Source account.
2. In the left navigation bar, click Sources. In the top-right corner, click + New source.
3. Find and select Google Sheets from the list of available sources.
4. For Source name, enter a name to help you identify this source.
5. Select your authentication method:

For Airbyte Cloud

• (Recommended) Select Authenticate via Google (OAuth) from the Authentication dropdown, click Sign in with Google and complete the authentication workflow.

For Airbyte Open Source

• (Recommended) Select Service Account Key Authentication from the dropdown and enter your Google Cloud service account key in JSON format:

  { "type": "service_account", "project_id": "YOUR_PROJECT_ID", "private_key_id": "YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY", ... }

• To authenticate your Google account via OAuth, select Authenticate via Google (OAuth) from the dropdown and enter your Google application's client ID, client secret, and refresh token.

6. For Spreadsheet Link, enter the link to the Google spreadsheet. To get the link, go to the Google spreadsheet you want to sync, click Share in the top right corner, and click Copy Link.
7. (Optional) You may enable the option to Convert Column Names to SQL-Compliant Format. Enabling this option will allow the connector to convert column names to a standardized, SQL-friendly format. For example, a column name of Café Earnings 2022 will be converted to cafe_earnings_2022. We recommend enabling this option if your target destination is SQL-based (ie Postgres, MySQL). Set to false by default.
8. Click Set up source and wait for the tests to complete.

Output schema

Each sheet in the selected spreadsheet is synced as a separate stream. Each selected column in the sheet is synced as a string field.

Airbyte only supports replicating Grid sheets.

Supported sync modes

The Google Sheets source connector supports the following sync modes:

• Full Refresh - Overwrite
• Full Refresh - Append

Data type map

Integration Type	Airbyte Type	Notes
any type	string

Performance consideration

The Google API rate limits are:

• 300 read requests per minute per project
• 60 requests per minute per user per project

Airbyte batches requests to the API in order to efficiently pull data and respect these rate limits. We recommend not using the same user or service account for more than 3 instances of the Google Sheets source connector to ensure high transfer speeds.

Troubleshooting

• If your sheet is completely empty(no header rows) or deleted, Airbyte will not delete the table in the destination. If this happens, the sync logs will contain a message saying the sheet has been skipped when syncing the full spreadsheet.

Changelog

Version	Date	Pull Request	Subject
0.3.9	2023-09-25	30749	Performance testing - include socat binary in docker image
0.3.8	2023-09-25	30747	Performance testing - include socat binary in docker image
0.3.7	2023-08-25	29826	Remove row batch size from spec, add auto increase this value when rate limits
0.3.6	2023-08-16	29491	Update to latest CDK
0.3.5	2023-08-16	29427	Add stop reading in case of 429 error
0.3.4	2023-05-15	29453	Update spec descriptions
0.3.3	2023-08-10	29327	Add user-friendly error message for 404 and 403 error while discover
0.3.2	2023-08-09	29246	Add checking while reading to skip modified sheets
0.3.1	2023-07-06	28033	Fixed several reported vulnerabilities (25 total), CVE-2022-37434, CVE-2022-42898
0.3.0	2023-06-26	27738	License Update: Elv2
0.2.39	2023-05-31	26833	Remove authSpecification in favour of advancedAuth in specification
0.2.38	2023-05-16	26097	Refactor config error
0.2.37	2023-02-21	23292	Skip non grid sheets.
0.2.36	2023-02-21	23272	Handle empty sheets gracefully.
0.2.35	2023-02-23	23057	Slugify column names
0.2.34	2023-02-15	23071	Change min spreadsheet id size to 20 symbols
0.2.33	2023-02-13	23278	Handle authentication errors
0.2.32	2023-02-13	22884	Do not consume http spreadsheets.
0.2.31	2022-10-09	19574	Revert 'Add row_id to rows and use as primary key'
0.2.30	2022-10-09	19215	Add row_id to rows and use as primary key
0.2.21	2022-10-04	15591	Clean instantiation of AirbyteStream
0.2.20	2022-10-10	17766	Fix null pointer exception when parsing the spreadsheet id.
0.2.19	2022-09-29	17410	Use latest CDK.
0.2.18	2022-09-28	17326	Migrate to per-stream states.
0.2.17	2022-08-03	15107	Expose Row Batch Size in Connector Specification
0.2.16	2022-07-07	13729	Improve configuration field description
0.2.15	2022-06-02	13446	Retry requests resulting in a server error
0.2.13	2022-05-06	12685	Update CDK to v0.1.56 to emit an AirbyeTraceMessage on uncaught exceptions
0.2.12	2022-04-20	12230	Update connector to use a spec.yaml
0.2.11	2022-04-13	11977	Replace leftover print statement with airbyte logger
0.2.10	2022-03-25	11404	Allow using Spreadsheet Link/URL instead of Spreadsheet ID
0.2.9	2022-01-25	9208	Update title and descriptions
0.2.7	2021-09-27	8470	Migrate to the CDK
0.2.6	2021-09-27	6354	Support connecting via Oauth webflow
0.2.5	2021-09-12	5972	Fix full_refresh test by adding supported_sync_modes to Stream initialization
0.2.4	2021-08-05	5233	Fix error during listing sheets with diagram only
0.2.3	2021-06-09	3973	Add AIRBYTE_ENTRYPOINT for Kubernetes support
0.2.2	2021-04-20	2994	Formatting spec
0.2.1	2021-04-03	2726	Fix base connector versioning
0.2.0	2021-03-09	2238	Protocol allows future/unknown properties
0.1.7	2021-01-21	1762	Fix issue large spreadsheet
0.1.6	2021-01-27	1668	Adopt connector best practices
0.1.5	2020-12-30	1438	Implement backoff
0.1.4	2020-11-30	1046	Add connectors using an index YAML file