I am currently looking into helping someone using Wordpress and Google Sheets. Essentially, they use Google Sheets data as a backend and Wordpress will display that as a table in a post.
The only issue is this data is refreshed every five mins by an add-on they are using. However, it would be best if the data was updated real time. I am a full stack developer, but not overly familiar with Word Press, is there a way to 1) get the table data to update in real time? Or 2) have the table data loaded on page refresh, like a typical UI to backend service call would?
You can use the wp_update_post() function or the REST API at any time to update the content of any page, or if the table is stored in an option, use update_option().
Then, it's just a matter of whether you want to scan for changes on the server side, or can send a webhook of some kind when the row is updated.
I can think of a few options.
Set up a Cron Job at the server level to check the google sheet for changes, and use either function above to update the table. I don't really recommend that for this because it won't be "live" updates, and may run more (or less) often than it needs to.
See if the "addon" can post the updated row to the WordPress REST api (or custom function handler)
Use one of the Sheets Triggers (onEdit?) in the sheet's Apps Script to fire a remote request to your site with the updated row's value (or the whole sheet?) and update it via the REST API or custom function handler with wp_update_post or update_option.
Use a third party "webhook tool" to hook the Sheet to your site. A tool like Zapier or IFTTT comes to mind.
I'd probably lean towards number 3 as it lets you tie straight into the Google Sheet with Apps Script, and POST just the updated row to your WordPress' site via the API, which provides the following benefits:
• Updates your site "live", as soon as an update is made to the sheet
• Doesn't require server-side set up
• Low amount of data transmitted over the wire
• No needless checks/requests
• No other third-party tools required
Related
I have a fully functional and working code (written in C#) which purpose is to track some hits to the specified GA property. This code has been tested and still works successfully. It adds some predefined dimensions (like App Version) to each hit and a several custom metrics to a certain hit types (like event with a certain Event Action).
So far so good everything works flawlessly when taking into account the first property to which these hits are being sent. Also everything is fine when I set up a brand new GA property and track my hits to it - that is, I'm able to see events in Realtime reports, and events show up in custom reports after a while so that I can see my custom metrics.
The issue is that when I try to send absolutely the same hits to the existing property which had been created and configured ages ago - there is no both dimensions (even predefined) and custom metrics in my custom reports. I see these events in realtime and behavior reports, and I'm even able to create a custom report against events count - but that's it. I'm able to use for example Day of the month as a primary dimension, but when I try to use App Version as a dimension or my custom metrics as report metrics - it says "There is no data for this view.".
I've already tried everything I could, have read almost every post about custom definitions in Google and viewed almost each related SO question and answer - still with no luck.
We use measurement protocol
There is a correct User Agent being sent with each hit
17 days has passed since my first attempt to track these hits with existing property
There is no filters and segments at all
There is only one view
For me it looks like a property misconfiguration, but I've inspected each configuration page (I have all possible rights granted) and have not found anything related.
Will appreciate any help with this issue.
UPD: The hit itself (with the sensitive data replaced):
t=event&ec=session&ea=connection_end&el=b225d53a-6bb2-8021-f7b5-ae7004ae0a00&cm1=174960&cm2=1751494&cm3=479033&tid=UA-XXXXXXX-X&cid=4119e77f-be87-4530-04d3-33882f8eea77&v=1&av=XX.XX.99.555&an=my-awesome-app&aid=app.awesome.my
UPD: Here is what I'm trying to achieve (screenshot was made at the test property, where everything works like a charm):
I work for a nonprofit which help disabled military veterans. We have all our participants register with us using Salesforce as the repository of their registrations. We have dashboard components in Salesforce Lighting which totals up the number of active participants we have. I would like to display the component on our WordPress site but have never done anything like that before. I was hoping to find someone who has done something like that and offer some direction on how to go about doing it.
I tried looking up WordPress plugins which integrate with Salesforce. Most seem to be geared towards sending registrations back and forth but not displaying information. From a little bit of research, it seems like coding might need to be involved. Maybe doing a REST API with a Post option which will send the data through an HTTP URI? But to my understanding is that it would require WordPress to be an API. I am sure there are gaps in my logic.
I dont have an extensive amount of programing language experience but am willing to learn. I have taken a few Java and JavaScript classes in school.
I have not attempted this yet. I am just looking for feedback and direction.
Few options here, in no specific order...
Do Wordpress users have real Salesforce accounts or is their data simply stored in SF? Ask your Salesforce admin if there's a "customer community" configured (if your SF org is really old he might refer to it as customer portal). Communities offer nice way of exposing SF to poeple who don't need full SF user licenses. Think like collaborating with real SF users on "My Cases", viewing reports & dashboards... But for this you'd really need people logged in to SF so it won't work if you want just something anonymous. Some more info
Another option might be using Sites (Visualforce pages that expose SF data to guest users). Think like displaying a product catalog, FAQ, web-to-lead form or some other generic "contact us" page that's anonymous. So if you have SF developer (or admin with good copy-paste skills) you could use some Visualforce charts. They can be 100% coded (like this) or fed data from a report (like this) so it's simpler for admin to change the report filters or something without really writing code. Not sure if the simple route will work on a Site, there are some old answers that say "No", you might have to try it out. Worst case you'd need Apex code (or JavaScript) to query SF for results and display them. And display that SF Site page as <iframe> in Wordpress.
A slight twist on the Sites option - do you use Chatter (bit like Twitter inside SF)? There's way to take a snapshot of a report when a milestone has been met and post it to chatter ("congrats for hitting X participants"). And embed feeds on Visualforce pages too. Docs
What SF edition you're on (Group/Professional/Enterprise...)? If you have API access to Salesforce you could query the info yourself from Wordpress and display it using whatever charting library's easiest for you (Google Charts, Flot...). There are tons of examples how to connect to SF from PHP (or maybe you could cannibalize a WP plugin). Technically it's one POST message to log in to SF and one GET to run a query (something as simple as SELECT COUNT() FROM Contact WHERE isActive__c = true?)
That'd be more or less everything in terms of pulling data out of Salesforce. I mean if you have API access enabled you can slice & dice it how you want, extract data with raw PHP code or use some middleware but overall idea doesn't change. Write queries yourself or use "Analytics API" to access report results (so your administrator has power to change it without coding)...
So how about pushing? SF could notify you about current participants count. At scheduled intervals or even realtime. That'd be "just" raw data though, you'd have to write visualisation yourself.
Plenty of options here
workflow rules (code-free), sends XML message to specified URL so you'd need a WP page that can "capture" the result. Could be sent on creation of new record or update of existing. Won't give you totals, it'd be data related to that particular record so you'd have to build kind of +1 / -1 counter... Or if you use a report + analytic snapshot (helper object to store report results) and have workflow on that - that could be really close to what's needed.
scheduled apex job to run some queries and send the results to you. Again - you'd need a WP url that can be called from SF
if there's a CometD plugin for Wordpress you should look at Salesforce Streaming API, Platform Events or (newer and even simpler to configure) Change Data Capture. Basically you "subscribe" to a topic (a SF query) and whenever SF data changes and SF decides it'd change the results of the query - it'd push the results to you. It's almost realtime. Too much to write about them, perhaps best if you'd try to click through some trailheads - SF self-paced training courses:
https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/modules/api_basics/api_basics_streaming
https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/modules/change-data-capture
https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/modules/platform_events_basics
I would like to create a small sidebar on each page of my website that contains related/popular pages with perhaps the top five pages users visit after reading the current page.
I could track and record user movements across the site myself and build the list that way, but as my site already uses Google Analytics and I know the data is there I'd rather access that if all possible.
The trouble is that I don't have the faintest idea whether it is possible or not.
Remember that the Google Analytics Reporting API is not real-time it can take between 24 - 48 hours for the data to finish processing and be in the API for you to request.
The Realtime Google Analytics api is real time but the data is only about 5 minutes old and its very limited to the dimensions and metrics you can request.
Quota, with either of those APIs you are limited to 10,000 requests per day per profile / view. I have no idea how many pages there are on your site or how may users are on your site but this could quickly blow out this NON extendable quota.
Options: Except that its not realtime data and use the reporting api every night run a request against the api get everything for two days ago then show your users on your site data that's two days old. Store the data in the database then you are showing them data on in your DB and wont have an issue with the quota as you only requested it once.
But this isn't exactly what you want as its not showing a users activity over the site. TBH I am not sure you can exactly use Google Analytics to track a user as the data is user non specific.
If you don't want to get involved with learning the API and develop this from the ground up, check out EmbeddedAnalytics (disclaimer: I created the service). We could provide such a widget.
You may find This Article useful. It provides the necessary query to find the "next page visited" using the page of interest as a filter. Ultimately your query would look like this:
https://www.googleapis.com/analytics/v3/data/ga?ids=ga%3Aabc&start-date=30daysAgo&end-date=yesterday&metrics=ga%3Apageviews&dimensions=ga%3ApreviousPagePath%2Cga%3AnextPagePath&sort=-ga%3Apageviews&filters=ga%3ApreviousPagePath%3D%40pricing
The query above will give you the "Next Page" along with pageviews assuming the "previous" page contains the word "pricing".
We could easily build such report widget for you:
You would insert a javascript source code snippet into your page. The javascript would pass the page url to our server and we would return the next "most popular pages visited".
The pages could be "linkified" so that someone could click the link to go to that page.
We already have caching mechanism in place. So each pageview would not require a new query to google (making it quicker and also staying away from the API quota that was mentioned above). For pages that are hardly ever looked at (e.g. less than once a week), we could make "on-demand" calls to get the statistics.
In my experience with the API, the lag in the API is only a couple hours. It may be longer for larger sites.
Please let me know if you are interested in such widget and I can work with you.
Ok! So I have spoken to a google representative about this issue, however since I am not enterprise level, he can't push me to tech support and suggested that I use the SO for answers. Here is the question...
In Google Maps Terms it states the following:
(b) No Pre-Fetching, Caching, or Storage of Content. You must not pre-fetch, cache, or store
any Content, except that you may store: (i) limited amounts of Content for the purpose of
improving the performance of your Maps API Implementation if you do so temporarily (and in
no event for more than 30 calendar days), securely, and in a manner that does not permit
use of the Content outside of the Service; and (ii) any content identifier or key that
the Maps APIs Documentation specifically permits you to store. For example, you must not
use the Content to create an independent database of "places" or other local listings
information.
This led me to originally believe that google would not allow caching of any type of information. However, then I read the following:
When to Use Client-Side Geocoding
The basic answer is "almost always." As geocoding limits are per user session, there is no risk that your application will reach a global limit as your userbase grows. Client-side geocoding will not face a quota limit unless you perform a batch of geocoding requests within a user session. Therefore, running client-side geocoding, you generally don't have to worry about your quota.
Two basic architectures for client-side geocoding exist.
Run the geocoding and display entirely in the browser. For instance, the user enters an address on your page. Your application geocodes it. Then your page uses the geocode to create a marker on the map. Or your app does some simple analysis using the geocode. No data is sent to your server. This reduces load on your server, but doesn't give you any sense of what your users are doing.
Run the geocode in the browser and then send it to the server. For instance, the user enters an address. Your application geocodes it in the browser. The app then sends the data to your server. The server responds with some data, such as nearby points of interest. This allows you to customize a response based on your own data, and also to cache the geocode if you want. This cache allows you to optimize even more. You can even query the server with the address, see if you have a recently cached geocode for it, and if you do, use that. If you don't, then return no result to the browser, and let it geocode the result and send it back to the server to for caching.
So one side says you cannot cache, the other side tells you, you should. Another solution it states is to always use clientside when you can, but then this becomes a grey area as well, because both examples state that you must have a user input data. What if the jquery read data from a div or span and then geocoded the information? The user wouldn't have actually done the geocode,but it was still done client-side? I'm trying to create a site that has a bunch of events generated by users and this site could get pretty loaded, so I am trying to determine the best practice in being able to do this. Google suggested here, so before you go and say this is "off-topic" please note, this is where they stated me to post.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
The first quote does not explicitly forbid caching data at all. It is ambiguous as to how much you can cache (what number explicitly is "limited amounts"?) but it does not forbid caching.
You are allowed to cache the data if it helps improve the performance of your site as long as you retain the data for no longer than 30 days and do not make it available in any way to any other service except the service that originally retrieved the data.
Regarding user interaction - if your user explicitly enters a page with the expectation that they will be shown geocoded information I would assume that this would fulfill "user interaction".
As an example from a project I worked on last year I had it set up to do the following:
- Show markers on the map
- If the user clicked a marker they were shown a popup with data from the cache if available, otherwise a geocode would be performed and the returned information would be cached along with the date/time of the cache.
Another page of the site showed a history of these markers at 5 minute intervals throughout the day. If cached data was present (from clicking the map marker as in the previous part) this would be shown, otherwise a geocode would be performed and the data cached as before. The user clicking to run the report was (in my opinion) enough "user interaction" to not count as pre-fetching as the user had to manually select a timeframe before the report would be displayed.
A cronjob then ran every day at midnight which would go through each record with cached data over 25 days old and remove it.
As it was I was caching much less than 10% of the marker positions being shown (20+ markers being updated every minute, but the report was being run on maybe 3-5 markers each day and only geocoding data for every 5th point).
I found this site
http://www.shutterfly.com/documentation/api_OrderImage.sfly
but there are no examples of actually walking through the whole process. Does anyone have any good documentation on using this API to take a local photo and allow someone to order a print via shutterfly?
I went through these steps:
Sign up for an account
Sign up as a developer
Create an application (I called mine Test). Note the generated Application Id and Shared Secret
The Shutterfly API page has a list of references for various Domain-specific APIs:
Address Book
Album Data
Folder Data
Go To Shutterfly UE
Image Upload
Interactive Sign-in
Image Request
Order
Pricing
Seamless Sign-in
User Data
User Authentication
Each uses RESTful principles. The documentation looks pretty comprehensive to me, if you need some background, here's links for RESTful APIs and ROME you may find useful
There is also an API Explorer section on the same page that allows you to test the methods via a form on their site. For example this form for CRUD operations on the album data.
Based on your comment, for your requirements, you would:
Use the Album GET to list albums, then get the data for a specific album.
Use the Image Get request to retrieve the image data, so your friend can verify the image(s) they want to purchase.
Authenticate the user
Use the Pricing POST request to get the estimated pricing for the image.
User the Order POST to submit the order over https
Update: Found a page describing using a Greasemonkey script which adds Shutterfly print ordering capability to Flickr. This might provide the basis for a solution.
For Reference:
The original link above is a middle step of the Shutterfly Open API ordering procedure.
The whole process goes through a series of steps allowing you to control much more than just pushing photos into somebody's album in Shutterfly.
With this process, your application can actually carry out the entire procedure of:
specifying the images and the sizes and quantities, or other products
calculating shipping, taxes, and totals
paying, and
launching the processing
It also includes the ability to see when the packages will be delivered and arrive.
Thus if you have a solid application for mapping your images onto paper and products, you can pretty much control the entire process.
Once the order is submitted, it will appear on the user's account at Shutterfly who the order was associated with.
Kudos to Shutterfly for making such a powerful tool! It would be great if other printing facilities had similar tools.