Getting Started with the Teachable API: A Beginner’s Guide (With a Step-By-Step Google Sheets Example)

Want to automate student tracking in your Teachable school? The Teachable API makes it possible!

In this beginner-friendly guide, we’ll break down what an API is, how the Teachable API works, and provide a step-by-step tutorial to log student enrollments into Google Sheets automatically—without any manual data entry.

What is an API?

An API (Application Programming Interface) is like a bridge that allows two applications to communicate with each other. Think of it like a waiter in a restaurant:

• You (the user) tell the waiter (API) what you want.
• The waiter (API) goes to the kitchen (the application) to get the data.
• The waiter (API) brings back what you requested.

With the Teachable API, you can ask Teachable for information (like student enrollments), send new data (like registering a student), or perform automated tasks without needing to log into your dashboard. To learn more about the Teachable API, visit their API documentation site at https://docs.teachable.com.

What Can You Do With the Teachable API?

The Teachable API allows you to:

✅ Get a list of students in your school.
✅ Retrieve student information (name, email, enrollment data).
✅ Add or update student enrollments automatically.
✅ Pull course data (like completion percentages).
✅ Generate reporting data for progress tracking. ✅ and more…

For our example, we’ll set up a simple way to automatically record all your student in Google Sheets.

Step-By-Step: Logging Student Enrollments to Google Sheets

Prerequisites

Before we begin, make sure you have these ready:

• A Teachable account (with API access available on Pro plan and above).
• A Google Sheet where you want to log enrollments.
• Your Teachable API Key (found in your Teachable admin panel under “Settings” -> “API Keys”).

Step 1: Create a Google Sheet & Enable Google Apps Script

1. Open Google Sheets.
2. Create a new spreadsheet and name it something like Teachable Enrollments.
3. In row 1, add these column names:

• Student ID
• Student Name
• Email

4. Click Extensions > Apps Script. This opens a new scripting editor where we’ll write a simple script to connect Teachable to Google Sheets.

Step 2: Write the Script to Fetch Enrollments

Replace the default code (Code.gs) in the Apps Script editor with the following:

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function logTeachableEnrollments() {
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  const sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getActiveSheet();
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  const apiKey = "YOUR_TEACHABLE_API_KEY";
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  let baseUrl = "https://developers.teachable.com/v1/users";  // Teachable API endpoint
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  let page = 1;
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  let perPage = 50; // Adjust based on API limits or requirements
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  let morePages = true; // Flag to indicate if more records exist
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  while (morePages) {
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    let url = `${baseUrl}?page=${page}&per=${perPage}`;
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    let options = {
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      "method": "GET",
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      "headers": {
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        "accept": "application/json",
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        "apiKey": apiKey
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      }
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    };
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    // Fetch data from API
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    const response = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url, options);
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    const data = JSON.parse(response.getContentText());
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    if (data.users && data.users.length > 0) {
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      data.users.forEach(user => {
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        sheet.appendRow([user.id, user.name, user.email]);
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      });
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      page++; // Move to next page
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    } else {
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      morePages = false; // Stop when no users exist in the response
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    }
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  }
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  Logger.log("All records have been fetched and logged.");
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}

Don’t forget to save the script, by clicking the save (disc) icon.

🚀 What This Script Does:

• Connects to Teachable’s API using your API key.
• Fetches a list of students (users).
• Adds a new row to your Google Sheet for each student that is found.
• Handles pagination

💡 Why Do We Handle Pagination?

Teachable’s API returns results in pages (e.g., 50 students per request). If you have more students than the per-page limit, you need to make additional requests to fetch all students.

Our script automatically loops through pages until there are no more students left to retrieve.

Step 3: Test Your Script

🔴 Google’s Security Warning: When you run the script for the first time, Google might show a security warning:

⚠️ “This app isn’t verified”

This happens because the script hasn’t been reviewed by Google, but since you wrote it yourself, it’s completely safe.

To proceed:

1. Click Advanced
2. Select Go to Untitled project (unsafe)
3. Grant permission for the script to access your Google Sheets

🛠 Tip: If you name your Apps Script project, the warning will display your project name instead of “Untitled project.”

1. Click the Run ▶️ button in Apps Script to manually trigger it.
2. Check your Google Sheet — if everything is working, your students will start to appear row-by-row

Final Thoughts

🚀 The Teachable API can save you hours of manual tracking! With just a few lines of code, you can automate student enrollments, making it effortless to manage your school.

Next Steps:

• ✅ Try running the script on your own Google Sheet
• ✅ Expand the script to pull more information on a specifc student