This document covers some techniques you can use to improve the performance of your application. In some cases, examples from other APIs or generic APIs are used to illustrate the ideas presented. However, the same concepts are applicable to the Google Sheets API.
Compression using gzip
An easy and convenient way to reduce the bandwidth needed for each request is to enable gzip compression. Although this requires additional CPU time to uncompress the results, the trade-off with network costs usually makes it very worthwhile.
In order to receive a gzip-encoded response you must do two things: Set an Accept-Encoding
header, and modify your user agent to contain the string gzip
. Here is an example of properly formed HTTP headers for enabling gzip compression:
Accept-Encoding: gzip User-Agent: my program (gzip)
Working with partial resources
Another way to improve the performance of your API calls is by requesting only the portion of the data that you're interested in. This lets your application avoid transferring, parsing, and storing unneeded fields, so it can use resources including network, CPU, and memory more efficiently.
Partial response
By default, the server sends back the full representation of a resource after processing requests. For better performance, you can ask the server to send only the fields you really need and get a partial response instead.
To request a partial response, use the fields
request parameter to specify the fields you want returned. You can use this parameter with any request that returns response data.
Example
The following example shows the use of the fields
parameter with a generic (fictional) "Demo" API.
Simple request: This HTTP GET
request omits the fields
parameter and returns the full resource.
https://www.googleapis.com/demo/v1
Full resource response: The full resource data includes the following fields, along with many others that have been omitted for brevity.
{ "kind": "demo", ... "items": [ { "title": "First title", "comment": "First comment.", "characteristics": { "length": "short", "accuracy": "high", "followers": ["Jo", "Will"], }, "status": "active", ... }, { "title": "Second title", "comment": "Second comment.", "characteristics": { "length": "long", "accuracy": "medium" "followers": [ ], }, "status": "pending", ... }, ... ] }
Request for a partial response: The following request for this same resource uses the fields
parameter to significantly reduce the amount of data returned.
https://www.googleapis.com/demo/v1?fields=kind,items(title,characteristics/length)
Partial response: In response to the request above, the server sends back a response that contains only the kind information along with a pared-down items array that includes only HTML title and length characteristic information in each item.
200 OK
{ "kind": "demo", "items": [{ "title": "First title", "characteristics": { "length": "short" } }, { "title": "Second title", "characteristics": { "length": "long" } }, ... ] }
Note that the response is a JSON object that includes only the selected fields and their enclosing parent objects.
Details on how to format the fields
parameter is covered next, followed by more details about what exactly gets returned in the response.
Fields parameter syntax summary
The format of the fields
request parameter value is loosely based on XPath syntax. The supported syntax is summarized below, and additional examples are provided in the following section.
- Use a comma-separated list to select multiple fields.
- Use
a/b
to select a fieldb
that is nested within fielda
; usea/b/c
to select a fieldc
nested withinb
.
Exception: For API responses that use "data" wrappers, where the response is nested within a
data
object that looks likedata: { ... }
, do not include "data
" in thefields
specification. Including the data object with a fields specification likedata/a/b
causes an error. Instead, just use afields
specification likea/b
. - Use a sub-selector to request a set of specific sub-fields of arrays or objects by placing expressions in parentheses "
( )
".For example:
fields=items(id,author/email)
returns only the item ID and author's email for each element in the items array. You can also specify a single sub-field, wherefields=items(id)
is equivalent tofields=items/id
. - Use wildcards in field selections, if needed.
For example:
fields=items/pagemap/*
selects all objects in a pagemap.
More examples of using the fields parameter
The examples below include descriptions of how the fields
parameter value affects the response.
Note: As with all query parameter values, the fields
parameter value must be URL encoded. For better readability, the examples in this document omit the encoding.
- Identify the fields you want returned, or make field selections.
- The
fields
request parameter value is a comma-separated list of fields, and each field is specified relative to the root of the response. Thus, if you are performing a list operation, the response is a collection, and it generally includes an array of resources. If you are performing an operation that returns a single resource, fields are specified relative to that resource. If the field you select is (or is part of) an array, the server returns the selected portion of all elements in the array.
Here are some collection-level examples:
Examples Effect items
Returns all elements in the items array, including all fields in each element, but no other fields. etag,items
Returns both the etag
field and all elements in the items array.items/title
Returns only the title
field for all elements in the items array.
Whenever a nested field is returned, the response includes the enclosing parent objects. The parent fields do not include any other child fields unless they are also selected explicitly.context/facets/label
Returns only the label
field for all members of thefacets
array, which is itself nested under thecontext
object.items/pagemap/*/title
For each element in the items array, returns only the title
field (if present) of all objects that are children ofpagemap
.
Here are some resource-level examples:
Examples Effect title
Returns the title
field of the requested resource.author/uri
Returns the uri
sub-field of theauthor
object in the requested resource.links/*/href
Returns the href
field of all objects that are children oflinks
. - Request only parts of specific fields using sub-selections.
- By default, if your request specifies particular fields, the server returns the objects or array elements in their entirety. You can specify a response that includes only certain sub-fields. You do this using "
( )
" sub-selection syntax, as in the example below.Example Effect items(title,author/uri)
Returns only the values of the title
and author'suri
for each element in the items array.
Handling partial responses
After a server processes a valid request that includes the fields
query parameter, it sends back an HTTP 200 OK
status code, along with the requested data. If the fields
query parameter has an error or is otherwise invalid, the server returns an HTTP 400 Bad Request
status code, along with an error message telling the user what was wrong with their fields selection (for example, "Invalid field selection a/b"
).
Here is the partial response example shown in the introductory section above. The request uses the fields
parameter to specify which fields to return.
https://www.googleapis.com/demo/v1?fields=kind,items(title,characteristics/length)
The partial response looks like this:
200 OK
{ "kind": "demo", "items": [{ "title": "First title", "characteristics": { "length": "short" } }, { "title": "Second title", "characteristics": { "length": "long" } }, ... ] }
Note: For APIs that support query parameters for data pagination (maxResults
and nextPageToken
, for example), use those parameters to reduce the results of each query to a manageable size. Otherwise, the performance gains possible with partial response might not be realized.