Few people brought to my attention google apps script so I did a little test drive today, and I am quite impressed. This suppose this is google's take on server-side JavaScript, that integrates with their google docs family and much more...
Here is one use case that I tested: loading list of users from a remote JSON service, and storing it in google spreadsheet.
// Inserts user into spreadseet.
var insertUser = function (user) {
var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
sheet.appendRow([user.name, user.userType]);
};
// Request service.
var service = function (url, callBack) {
var response = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url),
responseObj = JSON.parse(response.getContentText());
callBack(responseObj);
};
// Main init function.
function run() {
var url = 'http://www.somedomain.com/json/user/list';
service(url, function(d){
var users = d.data.users;
for (var i = 0; i < users.length; i++) {
insertUser(users[i]);
}
});
}