How to Write JSON to a Google Spreadsheet

The WriteJSONtoSheet method take a JSON object and appends it as a new row in a Google Spreadsheet. It takes the keys of the JSON object, matches them with the header row of the spreadsheet and arranges the columns accordingly. If there’s no column corresponding to a key, it is automatically added. This is handy for logging operations and data objects in a Google Sheet for easy analysis.

// Written by Amit Agarwal www.ctrlq.org

function writeJSONtoSheet(json) {
  var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();

  var keys = Object.keys(json).sort();
  var last = sheet.getLastColumn();
  var header = sheet.getRange(1, 1, 1, last).getValues()[0];
  var newCols = [];

  for (var k = 0; k < keys.length; k++) {
    if (header.indexOf(keys[k]) === -1) {
      newCols.push(keys[k]);
    }
  }

  if (newCols.length > 0) {
    sheet.insertColumnsAfter(last, newCols.length);
    sheet.getRange(1, last + 1, 1, newCols.length).setValues([newCols]);
    header = header.concat(newCols);
  }

  var row = [];

  for (var h = 0; h < header.length; h++) {
    row.push(header[h] in json ? json[header[h]] : '');
  }

  sheet.appendRow(row);
}
Amit Agarwal

Amit Agarwal

Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Champion

Amit Agarwal is a Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and Google Apps Script. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science (I.I.T.) and is the first professional blogger in India.

Amit has developed several popular Google add-ons including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Read more on Lifehacker and YourStory

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