making protected Google Sheet content available via GitHub Actions

[superjai]

Hey @bbest. Here's an issue that I think is worth working on - using GitHub Actions to make protected Google Sheets content available for InfographiqJS.

So, the problem that we have faced is that NOAA-owned Google Sheets can't be made visible to the public. This issue has been addressed for Infographiq in the R context using InfographiqR::ocnms_get_sheet().

However, this solution won't work for Javascript-only versions of Infographiq, such as for the Florida Keys IEA or the responsive table. As a work around, we have been using Google Sheets not owned by NOAA for these instances, as we can make them visible to the public.

But I have a feeling that, if Infographiq is to get wide usage within NOAA, they are going to want to use NOAA-owned Google Sheets. So, how to do this?

One straightforward approach would be to use InfographiqR::ocnms_get_sheet (or a slightly altered version of it) within a GitHub Action. On some frequency (once a day/week/whatever), an Action could run that would copy the latest version of a desired protected Google Sheet into a csv that is URL-accessible. That csv could then be read by the Infographiq Javascript.

What do you think?

[bbest]

That's one of handling this. The infographiqR::ocnms_get_sheet()uses non-interactive-auth to get access to the sheet by sharing with the email address [email protected] which I setup as a Google Service account (see test_gs4_auth.Rmd for details).

What I worry about losing is the instant update with the Florida Keys IEA. By adding this Github Action dependency, there's a delay and possibility of an error / something going wrong before it updates. As much as possible I'd encourage is creating a Google Sheet with read permissions (so outside NOAA or with NOAA admin sorting this out) and inviting any NOAA user to it.