Google has launched a new API for Google Sites as a Google Labs feature (meaning it may have some flaws). The Google Sites data API allows client applications to access, publish, and modify content within a Google Site. It is available to both Google account and Google Apps users.
Right now there is only one supported version of the Sites Data API. The documentation, available here, includes a protocol guide, a reference guide, and language guides corresponding to the client libraries.
The API lets you do things like:
– Retrieve, create, modify, move, and delete pages, comments, attachments, and other content.
– Review the revision history across the Site.
– Monitor all add, modify, and delete activity for a Site.
– Upload/download attachments and files.
– Create customized gadgets for your users.
Google also names some specific ways the API could be useful to businesses. You can update Google Sites from 3rd party applications. You can migrate files and content from workspace apps. You can export Google Sites pages, edit them offline, and re-import the update content. You can export your sites for backup, easily monitor changes across your important internal and public sites from a single gadget, and you can push new content to any site on your domain (including sites created by individual employees).
“Best of all, while this API is brand new, application developers will find it rather familiar – it is, after all, a Google Data API,” says Anil Sabharwal of the Google Enterprise team. “And like our 16 other Google Data APIs, this one comes with all the standard protocol support around authentication and querying that you’d expect. You’ll find everything you need to get started on the Google Code pages, including links to documentation and sample applications.”
Sabharwal also points to the open source import/export project on Google Code and SharePoint Move for Google Apps as applications that are already built on top of the Google Sites API. The former lets you export entire sites as static HTML, while maintaining the structure and page hierarchy, and the latter was developed for migrating data and content from Microsoft SharePoint to Google Sites.
If you make your own application, Google suggests promoting it in the Solutions Marketplace.
