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Make a Google Sheets API request

Source: R/request_make.R
request_make.Rd

Low-level function to execute a Sheets API request. Most users should, instead, use higher-level wrappers that facilitate common tasks, such as reading or writing worksheets or cell ranges. The functions here are intended for internal use and for programming around the Sheets API.

Usage

request_make(x, ..., encode = "json")

Arguments

x

List. Holds the components for an HTTP request, presumably created with request_generate() or gargle::request_build(). Must contain a method and url. If present, body and token are used.

...

Optional arguments passed through to the HTTP method.

encode

If the body is a named list, how should it be encoded? This has the same meaning as encode in all the httr::VERB()s, such as httr::POST(). Note, however, that we default to encode = "json", which is what you want most of the time when calling the Sheets API. The httr default is "multipart". Other acceptable values are "form" and "raw".

Value

Object of class response from httr.

Details

make_request() is a very thin wrapper around gargle::request_retry(), only adding the googlesheets4 user agent. Typically the input has been created with request_generate() or gargle::request_build() and the output is processed with process_response().

gargle::request_retry() retries requests that error with 429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED. Its basic scheme is exponential backoff, with one tweak that is very specific to the Sheets API, which has documented usage limits:

"a limit of 500 requests per 100 seconds per project and 100 requests per 100 seconds per user"

Note that the "project" here means everyone using googlesheets4 who hasn't configured their own OAuth client. This is potentially a lot of users, all acting independently.

If you hit the "100 requests per 100 seconds per user" limit (which really does mean YOU), the first wait time is a bit more than 100 seconds, then we revert to exponential backoff.

If you experience lots of retries, especially with 100 second delays, it means your use of googlesheets4 is more than casual and it's time for you to get your own OAuth client or use a service account token. This is explained in the gargle vignette vignette("get-api-credentials", package = "gargle").

See also

Other low-level API functions: gs4_has_token(), gs4_token(), request_generate()