I hope you guys are having a wonderful day.
I have set up a webhook in my woocommerce that sends JSON data to Google sheets. The webhook has been working great for months now, just today, I am having some trouble with it. I have tracked the issue to be in google sheets receiving the JSON data, but I don't know why this is happening.
Let me explain.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18G-yVDjYeccl6kznpZgSuRTysRMAu57pwY2oGf6-KWI/edit?usp=sharing
This is the google sheet, when it gets Woocommerce JSON data, it populates a new row.
The problem
Sometimes google sheets doesn't populate the row upon receiving a new order. The problem doesn't lie with woocommerce, because I have checked woocommerce with reqbin and the webhook fires with every order.
Furthermore, when I send requests from reqbin.com to my sheet, the sheet performs the operation successfully 5-6 out of 10 times. Other times it shows an error.
The Error
The error is due to google sheets not being able to parse JSON data, because the JSON data it receives 5 out of 10 times is not proper JSON data. Other 5 times, it is just as it should be. I have put a catch statement if the sheet is unable to parse JSON. Instead of appending new row with the parsed data, it appends the raw received data to the sheet.
It is clear now that there is some issue with google sheets handling that JSON data because when the same data is sent from reqbin.com to webhook.site, it is perfectly as it should be 10/10 times.
How to reproduce the issue
{ "id": 47222, "parent_id": 0, "status": "processing", "currency": "PKR", "version": "5.1.0","prices_include_tax": false, "date_created": "2021-06-10T01:23:46", "date_modified": "2021-06-10T01:23:46", "discount_total": "0", "discount_tax": "0", "shipping_total": "150", "shipping_tax": "0", "cart_tax": "0", "total": "1850", "total_tax": "0", "customer_id": 0, "order_key": "wc_order_7gIuR7px6MX9C", "billing": { "first_name": "Name", "last_name": "", "company": "", "address_1": "Address", "address_2": "", "city": "City", "state": "", "postcode": "", "country": "PK", "email": "email@email.com", "phone": "1234" }, "shipping": { "first_name": "Name", "last_name": "", "company": "", "address_1": "Address", "address_2": "", "city": "City", "state": "", "postcode": "", "country": "Country" }, "payment_method": "cod", "payment_method_title": "Cash on delivery", "transaction_id": "", "customer_ip_address": "8.8.8.8", "customer_user_agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 11; M2102J20SG) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/91.0.4472.88 Mobile Safari/537.36", "created_via": "checkout", "customer_note": "", "date_completed": null, "date_paid": null, "cart_hash": "64d834c72eecc8e32b9d83fd67d10d9c", "number": "47222", "meta_data": [ { "id": 869388, "key": "_shipping_calculator", "value": "" }, { "id": 869389, "key": "is_vat_exempt", "value": "no" }, { "id": 869391, "key": "_wfacp_report_data", "value": { "wfacp_total": "0.00" } }, { "id": 869392, "key": "_woofunnel_cid", "value": "4" }, { "id": 869393, "key": "_wfacp_post_id", "value": "24852" }, { "id": 869394, "key": "_wfacp_source", "value": "https://website.com/checkouts/checkout-page/" }, { "id": 869395, "key": "_wfacp_timezone", "value": "Asia/Karachi" }, { "id": 869396, "key": "order_comments", "value": "" }, { "id": 869412, "key": "_new_order_email_sent", "value": "true" }, { "id": 869424, "key": "_woofunnel_custid", "value": "4" }, { "id": 869425, "key": "_pys_purchase_event_fired", "value": "1" }, { "id": 869426, "key": "_wfob_stats_ids", "value": [] }, { "id": 869427, "key": "_wfocu_thankyou_visited", "value": "yes" } ], "line_items": [ { "id": 35114, "name": "MTECH Ultra Resilient Knife", "product_id": 11074, "variation_id": 0, "quantity": 1, "tax_class": "", "subtotal": "1700", "subtotal_tax": "0", "total": "1700", "total_tax": "0", "taxes": [], "meta_data": [], "sku": "", "price": 1700, "parent_name": null } ], "tax_lines": [], "shipping_lines": [ { "id": 35115, "method_title": "Fast Shipping (2-4 Days)", "method_id": "flat_rate", "instance_id": "1", "total": "150", "total_tax": "0", "taxes": [], "meta_data": [ { "id": 275053, "key": "Items", "value": "MTECH Ultra Resilient Knife × 1", "display_key": "Items", "display_value": "MTECH Ultra Resilient Knife × 1" } ] } ], "fee_lines": [], "coupon_lines": [], "refunds": [], "date_created_gmt": "2021-06-09T20:23:46", "date_modified_gmt":"2021-06-09T20:23:46", "date_completed_gmt": null, "date_paid_gmt": null, "currency_symbol": "₨","_links": { "self": [ { "href": "https://website.com/wp-json/wc/v3/orders/47222" } ],"collection": [ { "href": "https://website.com/wp-json/wc/v3/orders" } ] } }
https://script.google.com/macros/s/AKfycbxupm9bje86F4PQQkyys_LWtXs_kj279R0ipgnZ-cLd7aiEADf1AN_prhk28vOPW9JsRQ/exec
How do I solve the issue? Please let me know if you need any more information. Thanks.
Edit:
Instead of getting a full JSON body like mentioned above, the google sheets seems to be getting the following JSON.
{contextPath=, queryString=, parameter={}, postData=FileUpload, parameters={}, contentLength=3981.0}
I would like to know why the google sheets default parameter (e) contains this instead of a full JSON body sent to it.
Edit # 2
I would like to know why the google sheets default parameter (e) contains this instead of a full JSON body sent to it.
This is because (e) has a body which will always contain those parameters. The error is due to Google Sheets receiving an empty JSON body. I am still unable to understand why this happens. When I send the same JSON to API testing sites, they always receive full JSON body. Google sheets, in some cases, does not. Why is that?
I managed to solve the issue with some trial and error. For anyone facing the same issue in the future, here is what worked for me.
I was using e.postData.contents to get the JSON body but this seems to have stopped working, which was causing the JSON body to be empty. I tried e.postData.getDataAsString(); which seems to be working just fine and the issue has been resolved.