I currently have a Google Apps Script web app that lets users do these things:
Access and modify Excel files stored in my Google Workspace Drive
Handle and edit CSV documents from my Google Workspace storage
Manage script settings, user data, and document attributes for the project
The web application runs with my account permissions.
Now I want to develop an Android app that can do the same things. Can this be done? If so, could someone share some guidance, code examples, or tutorials to help me get started?
Yeah, you can definitely build an Android version. Just heads up - you’ll need to completely rework the permissions since mobile apps can’t use the same service account setup as Apps Script. I did this transition about six months back and got burned by rate limiting. The Drive API is way more aggressive with mobile requests than server-side scripts. You’ll need solid retry logic and should cache stuff, especially for CSV operations that hit the API multiple times. The auth setup’s a pain to configure but once it’s working, users actually prefer it over web apps. Test the hell out of it with big Excel files though - Android handles memory totally different than your current server setup.
yeah, definitely doable but heads up - android permissions are completely different from your script setup. you’ll have to handle user auth yourself since it won’t run under your account anymore. google drive api for android works well, just expect the oauth flow to be frustrating at first.
Yes, converting your Google Apps Script web app to an Android app is entirely feasible. I undertook a similar project for managing my Google Drive files. The key challenge you’ll face is implementing authentication; your web app currently operates under your own permissions, but for Android, you’ll need to utilize OAuth 2.0 with Google’s client libraries, enabling users to sign in with their own accounts. For implementation, make sure to incorporate the Google Drive Android API, the Google Sheets API, and the Google Sign-In library—Drive will manage your file operations while Sheets will handle the Excel files. A crucial point to remember is that mobile apps process large CSV files quite differently compared to web apps, so if you anticipate working with files over a few hundred KB, consider chunking processing tasks to avoid memory issues unique to mobile platforms. Google’s Android Drive documentation is quite helpful and includes practical code examples to assist you.