Import JSON from an API in Google Sheets

Originally written for bulldo.gs — republished here with the canonical link pointing home. I want to pull live JSON data from an API endpoint directly into a Google Sheet without installing an add-on. // Fetch JSON from an API and write it to the active sheet // Adjust API_URL and the field list to match your endpoint function importJsonFromApi () { var API_URL = ' https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users ' ; var sheet = SpreadsheetApp . getActiveSpreadsheet (). getActiveSheet (); var response = UrlFetchApp . fetch ( API_URL ); var raw = response . getContentText (); var data = JSON . parse ( raw ); var headers = [ ' id ' , ' name ' , ' username ' , ' email ' , ' phone ' ]; var rows = data . map ( function ( obj ) { return headers . map ( function ( key ) { return obj [ key ] || '' ; }); }); sheet . clearContents (); sheet . getRange ( 1 , 1 , 1 , headers . length ). setValues ([ headers ]); sheet . getRange ( 2 , 1 , rows . length , headers . length ). setValues ( rows ); } Why getContentText() comes before JSON.parse UrlFetchApp.fetch() returns an HTTPResponse object, not a string. The first time I skipped getContentText() and passed the response object directly to JSON.parse(), it silently parsed to null and the sheet wrote nothing. You need raw = response.getContentText() to get the actual body as a string, then JSON.parse(raw) turns it into a JavaScript object or array. The URL must be publicly accessible or accept an API key via a query parameter or Authorization header. Add headers like this: UrlFetchApp.fetch(url, { headers: { Authorization: 'Bearer ' + token } }). Apps Script's UrlFetchApp quota is 20,000 calls per day on a free Google account, 100,000 on Workspace. The rectangular array constraint — why setValues fails without mapping setValues() is strict: it requires a 2D array where every row has the same number of columns. If you hand it an array of plain JSON objects, it throws 'The number of rows or columns in the range does not match the number of