关于通过Smartsheet API更新下拉列表值的技术咨询

Absolutely, you can update the options in a Smartsheet dropdown (picklist) column using the API—this is the perfect solution for your multi-date submission use case since native forms don’t support multi-date pickers. Let’s break down how to do this properly, and address the issues you ran into with automations.

First: Yes, the API supports updating picklist options #

Instead of relying on automations that move rows (which caused your sheet-wide issues), you can directly modify the dropdown column’s options via Smartsheet’s API. Here’s a step-by-step approach:

1. Generate your list of future dates (excluding today)

First, create a programmatic list of all future dates formatted to match Smartsheet’s expected date string format (ISO 8601, like YYYY-MM-DD works reliably). For example, in Python:

from datetime import datetime, timedelta

today = datetime.today().date()
future_dates = []
# Generate next 365 days as an example—adjust the range as needed
for days_ahead in range(1, 366):
    next_date = today + timedelta(days=days_ahead)
    future_dates.append(next_date.strftime("%Y-%m-%d"))

2. Use the API to update the picklist column

You’ll use the Update Column endpoint (PUT /sheets/{sheetId}/columns/{columnId}) to replace the column’s existing options with your generated date list.

Key details:

• The column type must remain PICKLIST in your request payload.
• The options array will overwrite all existing dropdown values—so make sure your list includes every date you want users to select.

Example API payload (JSON):

{
  "type": "PICKLIST",
  "options": ["2024-05-21", "2024-05-22", "2024-05-23", "..."]
}

If you use the Smartsheet Python SDK, here’s a complete code snippet to execute this:

import smartsheet
from datetime import datetime, timedelta

# Initialize client with your API token
smartsheet_client = smartsheet.Smartsheet("YOUR_API_TOKEN")

# Replace with your sheet and column IDs
SHEET_ID = 123456789
COLUMN_ID = 987654321

# Generate future dates
today = datetime.today().date()
future_dates = []
for days_ahead in range(1, 366):
    next_date = today + timedelta(days=days_ahead)
    future_dates.append(next_date.strftime("%Y-%m-%d"))

# Prepare update request
column_update = {
    "type": "PICKLIST",
    "options": future_dates
}

# Execute the update
try:
    response = smartsheet_client.Sheets.update_column(SHEET_ID, COLUMN_ID, column_update)
    print("Dropdown options updated successfully!")
except Exception as e:
    print(f"Error updating column: {str(e)}")

Why your automation approach caused issues #

It sounds like your automation setup was configured to move entire sheets instead of specific rows, which is a common misconfiguration. Automations are great for row-level workflows, but directly modifying column properties via the API is far more reliable for this use case—you avoid unintended side effects and have full control over the dropdown values.

Important considerations #

• Ensure your API token has Edit permissions for the target sheet.
• Test with a small date list first to verify formatting and functionality.
• Smartsheet will display dates based on your sheet’s locale, but using ISO format in the API ensures proper parsing.

备注：内容来源于stack exchange，提问作者Zain Ul Abidin