API DATA CLEANING FOR GOOGLE SHEETS
Introduction to the Flookup API
The Flookup API offers a powerful suite of REST endpoints designed to integrate advanced data cleaning directly into your applications and workflows. You can programmatically access features for fuzzy matching, similarity scoring and deduplication through reliable, CORS-enabled endpoints. Whether for internal systems or public-facing applications, our API provides a seamless solution for automating complex data processing tasks.
Flookup Data Wrangler: API
- Your credit balance expires one year after your last purchase
- Refill anytime to add to your balance and reactivate expired credits
- Starts at 10,000 credits per purchase, with up to 1,000,000 available
- Rate limit: 60 requests/minute
- Max dataset size: 5,000 rows
- Public API for browser-side integration and commercial use
Our Fair Use Guarantee
We want you to be happy with your purchase. If you are not satisfied with the Flookup API within 14 days of your first purchase and have used fewer than 1,000 credits, please contact us.
We will gladly issue a full refund, but we just ask that you provide feedback so we can improve our service.
Quick Overview
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Normalize Text | Clean and standardize text by removing diacritics, punctuation, stop words or extracting URL components |
| Fuzzy Similarity | Generate a similarity score between two text or numeric inputs |
| Fuzzy Lookup | Locate the closest match to a value or list of values within a dataset by percentage or sound similarity |
| Unique List | Remove duplicates from arrays or columns by percentage or sound similarity |
Request Authentication
All API requests must be authenticated by including your "apiKey" in the JSON body of the request. You will receive your "apiKey" via email after subscribing to a plan.
Example Request Body Structure:
{ "apiKey": "your_api_key_here", ... }
Failure to provide a valid API key in the request body will result in an authentication error.
Important: Your API key is a secret. Do not share it publicly or commit it to version control. Keep it secure to prevent unauthorized use of your credits.
How to Make API Requests
You can test the Flookup API directly from your terminal using a tool like cURL. Below is an example of how to call the /fuzzyLookup endpoint with a JSON payload:
curl -X POST https://api.getflookup.com/fuzzyLookup \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"apiKey": "your_api_key_here",
"lookup_value": [["apple"]],
"table_array": [["apple", "fruit"], ["banana", "fruit"]],
"lookup_col": 1,
"index_num": 2
}'
Or in Google Apps Script:
function callFlookup() {
let url = "https://api.getflookup.com/fuzzyLookup";
let payload = {
apiKey: "your_api_key_here",
lookup_value: [["apple"]],
table_array: [["apple","fruit"], ["banana","fruit"]],
lookup_col: 1,
index_num: 2
};
let options = {
method: "POST",
contentType: "application/json",
payload: JSON.stringify(payload),
muteHttpExceptions: true
};
let response = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url, options);
let responseCode = response.getResponseCode();
let responseBody = response.getContentText();
if (responseCode === 200) {
let data = JSON.parse(responseBody);
Logger.log(data.result);
} else {
Logger.log(Error: ${responseCode} - ${responseBody});
}
}Flookup API Endpoints
Normalize Text
POST https://api.getflookup.com/normalize- Description: Cleans and standardizes text data based on a specified operation.
- Request Body:
{ "apiKey": "...", "lookup_value": [["São Paulo"]], "operation": "diacritics" }Parameters Explained
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| lookup_value | A single value or an array of values to normalize e.g. "value1" or [["value1"], ["value2"]] |
| operation | (Optional) The normalization method. Defaults to "diacritics". Options: "diacritics", "punctuations", "text", "domain", "path" |
| stop_array | (Optional) A custom list of words or characters to use for "text" or "punctuations" operations |
| threshold | (Optional) The similarity threshold (0 to 1) for matching stop words in the "text" operation; it defaults to 0.8 |
Response
{ "result": [["Sao Paulo"]] }Errors
{ "error": "Error: ..." }Fuzzy Similarity
POST https://api.getflookup.com/fuzzySimilarity- Description: Returns the percentage similarity score between two strings or numbers.
- Request Body:
{ "apiKey": "your_api_key_here", "left_string": "string1", "right_string": "string2" }Parameters Explained
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| left_string | A single value or an array of values to compare. |
| right_string | A single value or an array of values to compare. |
Response
{ "result": 0.92 }Errors
{ "error": "Error: ..." }Fuzzy Lookup
POST https://api.getflookup.com/fuzzyLookup- Description: Finds and locates values against a table and returns the best matches.
- Request Body:
{ "apiKey": "...", "lookup_value": [["..."]], "table_array": [["..."]], "lookup_col": 1, "index_num": 2, "threshold": 0.8 }Parameters Explained
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| lookup_value | A single value or an array of values to look up e.g. "value1" or [["value1"], ["value2"]] |
| table_array | An array of values to compare with each item from lookup_value |
| lookup_col | The column of table_array to lookup |
| index_num | The column of table_array from which to return matches |
| threshold | (Optional) The minimum level of similarity for a match; it defaults to 0.8 |
Response
{ "result": [["matched value", score], ...] }Errors
{ "error": "Error: ..." }Unique List
POST https://api.getflookup.com/uniqueList- Description: Deduplicates a list or column using fuzzy or sound-based matching, leaving only unique values.
- Request Body:
{ "apiKey": "...", "col_array": [["..."]], "index_num": 1, "threshold": 0.8, "operation": "by_percentage" }Parameters Explained
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| col_array | An array of values to process for duplicates |
| index_num | The column of col_array from which to remove duplicates |
| threshold | (Optional) The minimum level of similarity for a match; it defaults to 0.8 |
| operation | (Optional) The method for identifying duplicates; options are "by_percentage" or "by_sound"; it defaults to "by_percentage" |
Response
{ "result": [["unique1"], ["unique2"], ...] }Errors
{ "error": "Error: ..." }Check Quota Status
POST https://api.getflookup.com/checkQuotaStatus- Description: Check your current API call usage and remaining quota for your plan.
- Request Body:
{ "apiKey": "your_api_key_here" }Response
{ "status": "active", "credits_remaining": 9850 }Errors
{ "error": "Error: ..." }Flookup API Privacy
We are committed to protecting your privacy. When you use the Flookup API, we collect your API key for authentication and usage tracking. We do not store the data you process through the API. All data transmission is encrypted. For more details, please see our full Privacy Policy.