I’m working on an Android application where I need to display content from a Google Sheets file. The spreadsheet contains 2 different worksheets, and I want to show the data from each worksheet in separate activities within my app.
I’m looking for guidance on how to implement this feature. What libraries or APIs do I need to use? I came across a library called jxl.jar during my research. Is this the right approach for accessing Google Sheets data?
Any help with the implementation steps would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Skip the Google Sheets API - it’s a nightmare with authentication and complexity. I learned this building multiple apps that needed spreadsheet data.
Latenode handles the Google Sheets connections. Connect your sheet once and it automatically pulls from both worksheets. No OAuth setup, rate limits, or credential mess.
It separates data fetching from your Android code perfectly. Set up automation that grabs data from both sheets and formats it for your app. Your Android app just hits one clean endpoint.
I use this for everything now. Automation runs in background, keeps data fresh, handles Google API quirks. Your app gets reliable data without network timeouts or API changes.
When clients want more sheets or different data structure? Update the automation instead of rebuilding your app.
just tack /export?format=csv&gid=SHEET_ID onto your Google Sheets URL. way simpler than messing with APIs and authentication. grab the data with OkHttp, parse it with OpenCSV. perfect for read-only stuff and you don’t hit any quotas.
Been through this exact scenario recently and ended up using Google Sheets API v4 with Retrofit for network calls. The key thing that tripped me up initially was handling the different worksheet IDs - each sheet has its own gid parameter you’ll need to extract. For displaying in separate activities, I’d create a data model class for each worksheet since they probably have different column structures. One gotcha I ran into was rate limiting - Google has quotas on API calls, so implement proper error handling for 429 responses. Also, you can make the sheets publicly viewable and use a simple API key instead of OAuth if the data isn’t sensitive, which makes authentication way simpler.
jxl.jar only works with local Excel files, not Google Sheets. You need the Google Sheets API v4 with the google-api-services-sheets library. It’s straightforward once you set up OAuth - just authenticate and call the API to grab your spreadsheet data.
I’ve done something similar and Google Sheets API is definitely your best bet. Just enable it in Google Cloud Console and set up credentials for your Android app. Use sheets.readonly scope if you’re only displaying data - that’s usually enough. The mobile auth flow can be a pain, so spend time getting that right. Cache everything locally though - API calls are slow and users hate waiting when their connection sucks. Grab the spreadsheet ID from the URL and use range notation like “Sheet1!A1:Z100” to pull specific data.