IssueTracker

Request Summary:

An increasing number of custom functions aren't just running a script with basic logic, but they're running a script that makes an API call somewhere else. Often times these API calls bring data into a spreadsheet from external systems. For instance, you can imagine a custom function =RECENTUBERS() that returns a list of your most recent Uber rides. Or =STOCKPRICE("GOOG") that returns the current price of a ticker.

The issue is that spreadsheet recalculation for custom functions is unpredictable. Imagine a spreadsheet that only has a single function in A1: =STOCKPRICE("GOOG"). When would that spreadsheet recalculate? It's hard to tell. But a user might want it to recalculate every minute or every hour.

I highly recommend implementing a standard way to force recalculation a whole spreadsheet and a single sheet. This may be as simple as Spreadsheet.recalculate() and Sheet.recalculate() methods. This way, developers can build functionality for keeping spreadsheets up-to-date with external data services, rather than just keep up to date with state changes in the spreadsheet itself. In the case of the stock price example, state will never change in the spreadsheet but data outside of the spreadsheet is changing constantly.

Just like Google Sheets acknowledged that people want spreadsheets in the cloud, a change like this would acknowledge that people have data in the cloud, not just in spreadsheets :). I'd love to see it!

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