How do I correctly fetch and use API data for my table?

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1

Hello,
I built a database and table for board games that we play (there’s almost 100 games on it!).

After adding plenty of data, I realized that Board Game Geek (BGG) has an XML API to allow us to grab data for our tables: BGG XML API2 | Wiki | BoardGameGeek

Here’s the table I built now, populated with quite a bit of data: https://www.seanarenas.com/games

It looks like I’ll hit them with a URL something like:
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/xmlapi/boardgame/231696?

That returns a lot of cool information like:
2017
2
4
30
30
30
12
Bob Ross: Art of Chill Game

How do I make use of this information in:
a) Tables on my /games page above, and;
b) On a single page showing info about the game?

For a) the goal is to list the games that a particular player owns, so the group of players can look at them together and decide which ones to play based on complexity, duration, # of players, etc.

2

You can fetch data from an external API, using the fetch function as explained here .

Unfortunately, if the API you use returns XML you’re probably going to have a hard time parsing it. Check to see if you can get the information as JSON. That will make your life a lot easier.

3

I have found some JSON wrappers, but nothing put out by the makers.

They have a XMLAPI2 but I couldn’t figure out how to get a response from it.

Is the difficulty in code difficulty or in tedium? If it’s tedium, I can do it.

4

I guess it’s tedium. There is no built in way in JavaScript to parse XML as there is to parse JSON.

5

So I’d have to put in a translation that says something like, “If XML passes then treat it like ” ? But that just has to be done once, right?

6

If you’re receiving consistent XML which is not to complicated and deeply nested you should be okay.

7

Thanks -so where do I look for how to set up my site to correctly get this information?

8

You can fetch data from an external API, using the fetch function as explained here .

9

Do any of you guys know if you can use fetch with the API on Google Sheets to transfer data from there to the database in real time? I couldn’t do this myself with my current knowledge base but have a friend who can help. He’s more likely to help if I can say specifically what I need and provide some information on it. This would be really helpful as I would like to use jotform’s on my site. I’m sure their API would allow it if wix will but I am assuming it would be better to go through Google Sheets…

Thanks!