Kind of a late answer but this might help others who are facing the same problem.
The widgets / search filters attached to a graph issue getData calls of their own. If your custom adapter is built to retrieve data via API calls from third party services, data which is agnostic to the request.fields property sent forward by GDS => then these API calls are multiplied by N+1 (where N = the amout of widgets / search filters your report is implementing).
I could not find an official solution for this either, so I invented a workaround using cache.
The graph's request for getData (typically requesting more fields than the Search Filters) will be the only one allowed to query the API Endpoint. Before starting to do so it will store a key in the cache "cache_{hashOfReportParameters}_building" => true.
if (enableCache) {
cache.putString("cache_{hashOfReportParameters}_building", 'true');
Logger.log("Cache is being built...");
}
It will retrieve API responses, paginating in a look, and buffer the results.
Once it finished it will delete the cache key "cache_{hashOfReportParameters}building", and will cache the final merged results it buffered so far inside "cache{hashOfReportParameters}_final".
When it comes to filters, they also invoke: getData but typically with only up to 3 requested fields. First thing we want to do is make sure they cannot start executing prior to the primary getData call... so we add a little bit of a delay for things that might be the search filters / widgets that are after the same data set:
if (enableCache) {
var countRequestedFields = requestedFields.asArray().length;
Logger.log("Total Requested fields: " + countRequestedFields);
if (countRequestedFields <= 3) {
Logger.log('This seams to be a search filters.');
Utilities.sleep(1000);
}
}
After that we compute a hash on all of the moving parts of the report (date range, plus all of the other parameters you have set up that could influence the data retrieved form your API endpoints):
Now the best part, as long as the main graph is still building the cache, we make these getData calls wait:
while (cache.getString('cache_{hashOfReportParameters}_building') === 'true') {
Logger.log('A similar request is already executing, please wait...');
Utilities.sleep(2000);
}
After this loop we attempt to retrieve the contents of "cache_{hashOfReportParameters}_final" -- and in case we fail, its always a good idea to have a backup plan - which would be to allow it to traverse the API again. We have encountered ~ 2% error rate retrieving data we cached...
With the cached result (or buffered API responses), you just transform your response as per the schema GDS needs (which differs between graphs and filters).
As you start implementing this, you`ll notice yet another problem... Google Cache is limited to max 100KB per key. There is however no limit on the amount of keys you can cache... and fortunately others have encountered similar needs in the past and have come up with a smart solution of splitting up one big chunk you need cached into multiple cache keys, and gluing them back together into one object when retrieving is necessary.
See: https://github.com/lwbuck01/GASs/blob/b5885e34335d531e00f8d45be4205980d91d976a/EnhancedCacheService/EnhancedCache.gs
I cannot share the final solution we have implemented with you as it is too specific to a client - but I hope that this will at least give you a good idea on how to approach the problem.
Caching the full API result is a good idea in general to avoid round trips and server load for no good reason if near-realtime is good enough for your needs.
