How to merge cells using the PHP version of the Google Sheet API v4

Question

I've succesfully set up my credentials and access following the Quickstart guide & the API v4 documentation.

Everything works great, I successfully tried to:

Update the spreadsheet title
Read/write values in each cell
etc.

However I keep getting the following error while trying to merge some cells:

Fatal error: Uncaught Google_Service_Exception: { "error": { "code": 400, "message": "Invalid JSON payload received. Unknown name \"merge_type\" at 'requests': Cannot find field.\nInvalid JSON payload received. Unknown name \"range\" at 'requests': Cannot find field.", "errors": [ { "message": "Invalid JSON payload received. Unknown name \"merge_type\" at 'requests': Cannot find field.\nInvalid JSON payload received. Unknown name \"range\" at 'requests': Cannot find field.", "domain": "global", "reason": "badRequest" } ], "status": "INVALID_ARGUMENT" } }

Source code:

<?php

include_once(__DIR__.'/vendor/autoload.php');
include_once(__DIR__.'/client.php');

$id_spreadsheet = '12xymzMe8OLbX9vw84'; // My spreadsheet ID (redacted for Stackoverflow)

/* Retrieve the API access */
$service = new Google_Service_Sheets(getClient());

/* Merge header columns */
$range = new Google_Service_Sheets_GridRange();
$range->setStartRowIndex(0);
$range->setEndRowIndex(1);
$range->setStartColumnIndex(1);
$range->setEndColumnIndex(24);
$range->setSheetId(0);

$request = new Google_Service_Sheets_MergeCellsRequest();
$request->setMergeType('MERGE_COLUMNS');
$request->setRange($range);

$batchUpdateRequest = new Google_Service_Sheets_BatchUpdateSpreadsheetRequest(['requests' => $request]);
$response = $service->spreadsheets->batchUpdate($id_spreadsheet, $batchUpdateRequest);
echo '<pre>', var_export($response, true), '</pre>', "\n";

There is a documentation that explains how you can use the MergeCellsRequest function. It was also explained in this SO post, although it was written in python. But there it was explained how you can use the function. — MαπμQμαπkγVπ.0
Thank you. I've carefully read the documentation and examples as well as the post you mentioned before posting here. Unfortunately, the Python & PHP API libraries provided by Google don't work the same way. — Bruno Leveque

Rajender Verma Rajender Verma · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-03T10:18:54

If you've not resolved this issue, the problem is in the request you are sending, try to set your request in Google_Service_Sheets_BatchUpdateSpreadsheetRequest setRequests method

$batchUpdateRequest = new Google_Service_Sheets_BatchUpdateSpreadsheetRequest();
$batchUpdateRequest->setRequests($request);
$response = $service->spreadsheets->batchUpdate($id_spreadsheet, $batchUpdateRequest);
echo '<pre>', var_export($response, true), '</pre>', "\n";

How to merge cells using the PHP version of the Google Sheet API v4

1 Answers