Talk given at Using Google Apps Script and Sheets for social network data mining and analysis
Examples used in this presentation bundled at http://bit.ly/breaking-cell
There is growing interest in the use of data to provide actionable insight. This interest goes beyond the professional analysts and just as fields such as mathematics and astronomy have benefited from the enthusiastic amateur so does data science. Social networks are a rich playground of data and whilst many provide access to their data via APIs but access via this route can be daunting. You can of course turn to 'analytics as a service' sites which will take your credentials and provide you with some answers, but often this can be what they want to tell you and not what you want to hear. A solution is the spreadsheet. Spreadsheets provide an interface for data exploration for those with basic skills. With Google Sheets the opportunities increase exponentially, not just in terms of collaboration, but also with the power of Google Apps Script. Apps Script provides easy integration into other Google products and services, such as Google Analytics, as well as third party APIs like Twitter. In this presentation we show how Google Sheets can become a rich playground where data from different services can be collected and analysed.
[2024]Digital Global Overview Report 2024 Meltwater.pdf
Breaking the Cell #WebExpo
1.
2. Breaking the Cell
Using Google Apps Script and
Sheets for social network data
mining and analysis
Martin Hawksey
Chief Innovation, Technology
and Community Officer
@mhawksey
This work is licensed under
a Creative Commons Attribution
3.0 Unported License. CC-BY
mhawksey All links: http://bit.ly/breaking-cell
3. alt.ac.uk
Goal
◊ make you aware of social data
opportunities
◊ show you a toolset to achieve this
http://bit.ly/breaking-cell
20. Dr. Tony Hirst
The Open University
@psychemedia
ouseful.info
alt.ac.uk
http://bit.ly/breaking-cell
21. Say hello to Google Apps Script
CC-BY Google – Google Apps Script, 13-03-2012
alt.ac.uk
http://bit.ly/breaking-cell
22. alt.ac.uk
Code in the cloud
◊ Standalone Scripts
script.google.com
Google Drive > Create > Script
◊ Container-bound
– Google Documents, Sheets, Forms
Tools > Script editor
– Google Sites
More > Manage Site > Apps Script
http://bit.ly/breaking-cell
23. 11 Google apps, 1 platform in the cloud
Increase the power of your favorite Google apps —
like Calendar, Docs, Drive, Gmail, and Sheets.
Apps Script lets you do more with Google. All on a
JavaScript platform in the cloud.
http://bit.ly/breaking-cell alt.ac.uk
31. “
You may provide spreadsheet or PDF files or
alt.ac.uk
other export functionality via non-programmatic
means, such as using a “save
as” button, for up to 100,000 public Tweets
and/or User Objects per user per day
http://bit.ly/breaking-cell
47. Enable scripts to receive
POST and/or GET
function returns an HTML
service HtmlOutput object, ..
or a Content service
TextOutput object.
http://bit.ly/breaking-cell
Patrick Burns - Spreadsheet Addiction
http://www.burns-stat.com/documents/tutorials/spreadsheet-addiction/
Overlap with my work as a web developer – ambiguity of a web page and viewsource:
http://mashe.hawksey.info/2012/10/feeding-google-spreadsheets-exercises-in-import/
It’s easy to get data in … if you can find it
http://mashe.hawksey.info/2013/02/lak13-recipes-in-capturing-and-analyzing-data-canvas-network-discussion-activity-data/
View spreadsheet source to see the formula used
http://mashe.hawksey.info/2013/02/lak13-recipes-in-capturing-and-analyzing-data-canvas-network-discussion-activity-data/
View spreadsheet source to see the formula used
http://mashe.hawksey.info/2013/02/lak13-recipes-in-capturing-and-analyzing-data-canvas-network-discussion-activity-data/
View spreadsheet source to see the formula used
NodeXL the network browser for Microsoft Excel™
No persistence – as new data comes in old is removed
Feed is from Google’s cache (20 items opposed to 10 I’ve published in my feed)
RSS/Atom versus JSON
Google Sheets doesn’t do JSON as an import formula
SharedCount is moving to all API key access but there is still a free level
IMPORTDATA("http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=507b1a09fc815cb9e8b00df9db442d69&_render=csv&url=http://mashe.hawksey.info”)
Could do all this in Yahoo Pipes but why bother … there is a better way
Variation of this technique at http://mashe.hawksey.info/2012/06/rss-feed-social-share-counting/
IMPORTDATA("http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=507b1a09fc815cb9e8b00df9db442d69&_render=csv&url=http://mashe.hawksey.info”)
Could do all this in Yahoo Pipes but why bother … there is a better way
Variation of this technique at http://mashe.hawksey.info/2012/06/rss-feed-social-share-counting/
IMPORTDATA("http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=507b1a09fc815cb9e8b00df9db442d69&_render=csv&url=http://mashe.hawksey.info”)
Could do all this in Yahoo Pipes but why bother … there is a better way
Variation of this technique at http://mashe.hawksey.info/2012/06/rss-feed-social-share-counting/
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2010
Need to install Chrome App to get create script from Drive menu
Container bound scripts are included when you copy the parent document
The power is that google have made it easy to access and use their product APIs and also not worry where to host the code
It makes it very easy to write data in Drive to Sheets and more. Apps Script is cloud based and allows scheduling of scripts
UrlFetch … like CURL
https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/url-fetch/url-fetch-app
https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/services/#basic_javascript_features
These extra features include native JSON support