AppsScriptPulse

Solutions, V8, Advanced

Building the Ultimate Google Apps Script Front Ends. Part 2: Bundling NPM Modules

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Hey there, friends! 👋 Our Emojibar — yes, that’s what we’re calling it now — is coming along nicely! In the previous post, we learned how to bundle the project with Vite and vite-plugin-singlefile, and it’s now time to add some real functionality!

To complete our Emojibar, we’ll use two NPM modules:

  • Unicode-Emoji-JSON: We need a complete list of emojis, and this simple module provides them in JSON format. Perfect!
  • ToastifyJS: When users click on an emoji, it’ll be copied into their buffer. Just so they have some feedback, we’ll show them a confirmation toast. This library is great for this purpose.

We’ll also add search and navigation functionality, meaning that we’ll have the entire backbone of the application ready by the end of this post.

Source: Building the Ultimate Google Apps Script Front Ends. Part 2: Bundling NPM Modules

Solutions, Gmail, V8, Beginner

Add the User’s Signature Block to an Automated Gmail Email with Apps Script – Yagisanatode

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Sending out emails as a part of a Google Workspace automated workflow is a very common task. In Google Apps Script we can send emails to users using the MailApp.sendEmail(), the GmailApp.sendEmail() method or even as a JSON payload with the Gmail Advanced API service.

While one might expect that the sender’s signature block would also be transmitted with the automated email, we find that this is not in fact the case.

Scott Donald highlights some of the pitfalls of trying to access the Gmail signatures using Google Apps Script. Fortunately Scott also shares a workaround for using a Gmail draft to store a number of signatures/snippets. This is all wrapped in a handy getSignatureBlock() function, created and shared by Scott to get either the user’s primary signature block or one stored in a draft.

Source: Add the User’s Signature Block to an Automated Gmail Email with Apps Script – Yagisanatode

Solutions, V8, Advanced

Building the Ultimate Google Apps Script Front Ends, Part 1: Bundling with Vite 🚀

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Last week, we talked about the best way to build front-ends for Google Apps Script. Today, let’s roll up our sleeves and dive in! 😎

Source: Building the Ultimate Google Apps Script Front Ends, Part 1: Bundling with Vite 🚀

Solutions, Docs, Forms, Sheets, V8, Advanced

The Ultimate Google Apps Script Front-End Development Guide. Part 0: The Worst and the Best Practices

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Welcome to the Ultimate Google Ultimate Google Apps Script Front-End Development Guide!

If you are reading this post, then you likely have experience with Google Apps Script. Essentially, there are three types of front-ends that you can create with Apps Script:

  • Web apps
  • Modal/modeless dialogues
  • Sidebars

In this blog post series, we will only discuss HTML front-ends, as this is where you can create the most powerful and sophisticated user experiences. Unfortunately, the Card Service is outside the scope of this series, and it is not nearly as powerful as an HTML front-end. With that in mind, Google, how about allowing HTML front-ends for Workspace add-ons?

Source: The Ultimate Google Apps Script Front-End Development Guide. Part 0: The Worst and the Best Practices

Solutions, Drive, V8, Advanced

Efficiently exporting mulitple Google Docs files in PDF format with batch requests and Google Apps Script

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This is a sample script for exporting Google Docs files (Spreadsheets, Documents, and so on) in PDF format with batch requests using Google Apps Script.

As a reference sample situation, in order to export 100 Google Document files as PDF files, when I tested this sample script, the processing time was about 150 seconds and no error occurred. And, I confirmed that 100 valid PDF files were created in my Google Drive.

Kanshi Tanaike has been busy again, this time looking at how you can handle batch exports from Google Docs, Sheets and Slides using Google Apps Script. There is quite a bit of engineering to get your head around but if you are looking for a copy/paste solution everything is well commented for you to drop this code into your own project. If you’d like more context about the solution there is a related post on Stack Overflow.

Source: Exporting Google Docs Files in PDF format with Batch Requests using Google Apps Script

Library, V8, Drive, Intermediate

FilesApp is a GAS library for retrieving file and folder list in Google Drive

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When I create some applications using Google Drive, there are often the case which is required to retrieve the file list and folder list. I had prepared the script each time for each case so far. But recently, I thought that if there is a library for retrieving the file and folder list (as a tree), it will be useful for me and other developers.

The FilesApp library by Kanshi Tanaike has been around since 2018. I have to confess I wasn’t aware of this library until I read a more recent post, Retrieving Total File Sizes in Specific Folder of Google Drive using Google Apps Script. Similar to my own post on Creating a Google Drive report in Google Sheets the FilesApp library directly communicates to the Drive API, this library however goes a step further in terms of performance by using UrlFetchApp.fetchAll to handle some asynchronous Drive API calls.

Source: GAS Library – FilesApp

New IDE, Solutions, Web App, V8, Intermediate

Apps Script: solutions to the issue “installable triggers failing when created from another trigger function in V8”

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There’s a long standing issue with triggers installed programmatically by other triggers, that was kind of fixed last year, but users are still reporting problems, at least in certain locations (Japan, India and others). The issue in short: triggers installed programmatically would not be created, or fail systematically.

In many cases this affects add-ons (and, to be noted, the issue still persists when testing them, see Testing details); I had a slightly different scenario: a webapp that, when executed (doGet), would install a time based trigger for the user executing the script.

This article provides two solutions to an annoying issue and unlocks many possibilities for programmatically installed triggers.

Source: Apps Script: solutions to the issue “installable triggers failing when created from another trigger function in V8”

Solutions, Drive, Sheets, V8, Intermediate

Creating a Google Drive report in Google Sheets: Making Google Workspace Enterprise solutions with Google Apps Script

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Image credit: Martin Hawksey (with the help of DALL·E 2)

Think 10x — supercharging your Google Apps Script solutions by directly calling Google Workspace Enterprise APIs.

The Google Apps Script built-in services like SpreadsheetApp, Maps and GmailApp are a great onramp for users with limited coding experience, the flip side is you can find yourself easily getting results but not in the most efficient way. DriveApp is a great example where Google have made it easy to iterate across folders and files, but when you have lots of folders and files it becomes a time consuming process and you hit execution limits.

An alternative approach is using Google Apps Script to make direct calls to the Drive API. The benefits of this approach is you can be more specific in the data you want back and it gives more flexibility with how you call the API, in some cases with the ability to make batch or asynchronous processes.

In this post I highlight a method ideal for scenarios when you want to index larger volumes of My Drive files and folders to a Google Sheet with calls directly to the Drive API. The post includes some sample code you can use which instead is able to reduce a 4 minute runtime to index 10,000 files and folders to one that can complete in under 40 seconds!

Source: Creating a Google Drive report in Google Sheets: Making Google Workspace Enterprise solutions with Google Apps Script

Solutions, Sheets, V8, Intermediate

Putting values from of all Google Sheets in Google Drive folder into a master Sheet with low process cost using Google Apps Script

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This is a sample script for putting the values of all Spreadsheets in a folder to the master Spreadsheet with a low process cost using Google Apps Script.

Some clever scripting from Kanshi Tanaike to combine individual Google Sheets in a Google Drive folder into a single master sheet. To achieve this the solution uses the Google Sheets Advanced Service combined with UrlFetchApp.fetchAll() to asynchronous process the source Google Sheets. It’s reported that this method was able to process 50 source sheets in 10 seconds!!! There are some limitations to be aware of highlighted in the source post, but for a method to quickly process a lot of data this solution is definitely one to keep in mind.

Source: Putting Values of All Spreadsheets in Folder to Master Spreadsheet with Low Process cost using Google Apps Script

Solutions, Drive, V8, Intermediate

Get the Creator’s email of a Shared Drive with Google Apps Script

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Learn how the access the creator’s email of a Google Shared Drive with Google Apps Script using the Drive Activity API & Admin Directory SDK.

Scott Donald has found a clever way to get the Shared Drive creator using Apps Script and the Google Drive Activity API. Whilst there is a Google Drive ‘Drives’ endpoint the response doesn’t include the creator in the Drives Response object. This post is a nice example of how you can combine data from different Google Workspace APIs. Follow the source link for a detailed explanation.

Source: Get the Creator’s Email of a Shared Drive with Google Apps Script – Yagisanatode