Is there a way to present XML data in google sites

Question

In our organisation, we use TodoList by abstract spoon to track our software projects. I like this tool because it's fairly light weight while allowing the developers to collaborate without any server maintenance issues.

One thing I'd like to try out is setting up a project status page that our customers can view. Google sites offers a nice project status template which I thought I'd use. One of the things I'd like to be able to do is present the content of the todolist file (which is an XML file) in various formats. My thinking was to upload the XML file to google drive and present the data in different pages in the site using XSLT. The data doesn't need to be edited online, only viewed.

Is this even possible with google sites? Is there an alternative you can suggest? While I'm aware I might be able to use something like Bitbucket, GitHub or Gitlab, it doesn't quite slot into our dev model right now.

Answer 1

Here are some alternatives to present the content of an XML file in Google Sites

Copy both XML and XSLT in to new pages on Google Site

• Benefit: We don't need any programming, both format are accepted in Google Sites
• Disadvantage: You will need to update the page on every change on your list

Parsing the XML File located every where using XML HttpRequest

• Benefit: Can display directly. Doesn't need to be edited online
• Disadvantage: Data is not indexed in Google Search since it is rendered from a script

Parsing the XML File on Google Drive using Google Apps Script

• Benefit: Data is crawled and indexed in Google Search since it is displayed as html
• Disadvantage: Need to do a script like discussed on this sample script

So from the above I would suggest to take the last method.

Answer 2

I would recommend pasting the XML data into the Google Slides Script editor. Then you can parse it right from another tab of the Script editor using plain old Google Apps Script -- which is a custom version of JavaScript 1.6/1.7/1.8.