Sort range based on a column using a google sheets API in Java

I have my Java code working fine with retrieving and updating data to my Google Sheets spreadsheet.

I am trying to sort the data after updating, and getting a 500 Internal Server Error and was wondering what I am sending wrong. I am trying to ASCENDING sort Range "E1:I1000"

Here is my code:

		Sheets sheetsService = GoogleAuthorizeUtil.getSheetsService("worktest");
    BatchUpdateSpreadsheetRequest busReq = new BatchUpdateSpreadsheetRequest();
    SortRangeRequest srr = new SortRangeRequest();
    GridRange gr = new GridRange();
    SortSpec ss = new SortSpec();
    Request req = new Request();
    
    gr.setSheetId(0);
    gr.setStartRowIndex(1);
    gr.setEndRowIndex(1000);
    gr.setStartColumnIndex(5);
    gr.setEndColumnIndex(10);
    
    srr.setRange(gr);
    
    ss.setSortOrder("ASCENDING");
    ss.setDimensionIndex(1);
    
    srr.setSortSpecs(Arrays.asList(ss));
    
    req.setSortRange(srr);
    
    busReq.setRequests(Arrays.asList(req));
    
    sheetsService.spreadsheets().batchUpdate(googleID, busReq).execute();

Is there anything wrong in how I am trying to sort this?

Answer:

You are trying to sort columns E:I by column B - this is not possible!

More Information:

In your code, you are setting the dimensionIndex for which to sort the data by, to the value of 1. This isn't the second column of the data you want to sort, but the second column of your whole spreadsheet.

This isn't clear from the SortSpec documentation, but can be inferred from the example provided by Google in the Data Operations documentation

Code Fix:

All you need to do to sort this is change the value passed to setDimensionIndex:

ss.setDimensionIndex(1)

change to:

ss.setDimensionIndex(6)

References:

• Method: spreadsheets.batchUpdate | Sheets API | Google Developers
• Data Operations | Sheets API | Google Developers
• Sheets API | Google Developers - SortSpec