In this post I want to cover three things. First I want to introduce a little app I’ve developed which allows you to create a RSS feed for any of your Gmail labels (with the option to remove certain links – useful if you don’t want others unsubscribing you from mailing lists). Secondly I explain how it was made and how you can use it yourself. Finally I want to discuss how this could be used in an open course environment, utilising the vast processing power from services like Twitter and reusing their target marketing emails to your benefit with a bit of ‘dark social judo’.
This solution was first published in May 2013 and since then Google Apps Script has evolved deprecating services that originally made this solution possible, in particular, ScriptDB and the original XML service which includes a handy .parseJS() method.
Following a request I’ve recently updated the solution to make it work again. As well as swapping out ScriptDB in favor of using the Properties Service I used the makeRSS method previously highlighted here in Apps Script Pulse.
The problem: hyperlinks in Google Sheets can be in three different formats so if you have a script or add-on that relies on handling links in cells it can cause some headaches.
This article covers a thorough walkthrough of using Advanced Sheets Service to read hyperlinks from cells with different link formats.
For some context for seasoned Google Apps Script developers like me until V8 we’ve been working in a bit of an old school JavaScript bubble. With V8 there is an opportunity to write less verbose and more succinct code. To see some of the differences below I’ve copied the Writing JSON data mapped to row headings example from my original post and updated this with a V8 version and will highlight the changes.
This post covers a range of techniques and includes a typical pattern for writing structured data like JSON responses from third party sources.
