Writing Apps Script const scoping problems led to me to wonder how to get exactly which JavaScript features are supported by Apps Script and which are not. By deduction, it seems likely that the current version of Apps Script engine is Rhino v1.7R3. The level of JavaScript capabilities of that version of Rhino are detailed here http://mozilla.github.io/rhino/compat/engines.html
If so that’ll give us a documented record of what Apps Script supports. In this article I’ll try out a few features that are supported by one version of Rhino but not another.
What is Rhino?
It’s a JavaScript engine, written in Java, so can be used to provide a server based JavaScript environment. For more info, see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Projects/Rhino
Is Apps Script running on Rhino?
I don’t know for sure (if someone has definitive on that,then please let me know), but I do see some errors in the Apps Script issue tracker that appear to be from rhino eg.
“com.google.apps.maestro.rhino.UniqueTag@20ba544b: NOT_FOUND”
So let’s take that as strong evidence and proceed on that basis.
Versions of Rhino
Those included in the capability list are

Deducing which one it is should be a simple matter of finding capabilities present in one and not in another.
Shorthand object literal methods
These exist from version 1.7.7 onwards, so if they don’t work in Apps Script then we’ve narrowed it down to between 1.7r3 (or before this table) to 1.7.6
An object literal method example is
const ob = { eat: function () { return 'burger'; }, drink:function() { return 'shake'; } };
and a shorthand method is
const ob = { eat () { return 'burger';}, drink () { return 'shake';} };

That doesn’t work, so we know that it’s 1.7r3 to 1.7.6
Destructuring Arrays.
This exists in all versions, so we can confirm we are at least at version 1.7r3 (assuming it was introduced then).
An example of array destructuring is, and this works in Apps Script
const [firstName, lastName] = ["Robert","Smith","London"]; Logger.log (firstName + " " + lastName);
Let
As mentioned in Apps Script const scoping problems, let doesn’t work in Apps Script. This shows that the highest version of Rhino Apps Script can be is 1.7r3
Getters and Setters
I never noticed that Apps Script supported getters and setters until I did this analysis.
but indeed it does. Here’s an example of using set and get to simulate a db result iterator.
function f() { const dbResult = { rowIndex: 0, rows:[], set data (rows) { this.rows = rows; this.rowIndex = 0; }, get next() { return this.hasNext ? this.rows[this.rowIndex ] : null; }, get hasNext() { return this.rowIndex < this.rows.length; } }; dbResult.data= [['a'],['b'],['c']]; var x; while (x=dbResult.next) { Logger.log (x); } }
Conclusion
It looks like Apps Script is using the Rhino JavaScript engine v1.7r3, so that means that this list is a pretty good reference for what you can and can’t do in Apps Script.
For more like this see Google Apps Scripts Snippets
- A functional approach to fiddling with sheet data
- A functional approach to updating master sheet
- A recursive extend function for Apps Script
- A webapp to share copies of the contents of folders
- Abstracting services with closures
- Add-on spinner
- Addressing namespace and library methods from google.script.run
- Anonymous user registration with the Apps Script PropertiesService
- Apps for Office – binding example comparison
- Apps Script as a proxy
- Apps Script const scoping problems
- Calculating image dimensions in server side apps script
- Calculating the last day of a given weekday in the month
- Canvasser
- Chaining JavaScript
- Changing class properties dynamically
- Checking the argument types in Apps Script
- Cleaning up a document format
- Cleaning up heading levels
- Column numbers to characters
- Composing functions and functional programming
- Configurable canvas meter
- Convert JSON to XML
- Converting SVG to PNG with JavaScript
- Converting timestamps to dates formula
- Copying canvas and svg images from your Add-on
- Copying to new host location
- Copying to new host location
- Counting script and library usage
- Create sha1 signatures with apps script
- Creating a key digest to use for a cache key or to compare content
- Creating a pile of files list from Google Drive
- Creating and working with transposed sheet data arrays
- Cross Origin Resource sharing (CORS)
- CryptoJS libraries for Google Apps Script
- Custom checking for exponential backoff
- Data wrangling with named columns in Google Spreadsheet
- Dealing with objects that are too large for the property or cache store
- Detecting Spreadsheet tables automatically with Google Apps Script
- Direction minimizer – other usages
- Do something useful with GAS in 5 minutes
- Dynamically creating tables with clusterize.js
- EasyCron Library
- ES6 JavaScript features
- Exponential backoff
- Exponential backoff for promises
- Fiddler and rangeLists
- Fiddling with text fields that look like dates
- Filling ranges in Google Sheets
- Finding a Drive App folder by path
- Finding where Drive hosting is being used in Sites
- Flattening an object with dot syntax
- Flattening and unflattening objects to spreadsheets
- Formatting GraphQL queries
- Formatting sheet column data with fiddler
- From notes to frequencies and back again
- From Xml to JSON
- Generating and managing random lists with JavaScript and Apps Script
- Generating coupon codes with expiry dates
- Generating test data for sheets and tables
- Get GAS library info
- Getting an htmlservice template from a library
- Getting insights into Sheets performance
- Google Drive as cache
- Header formatting with fiddler
- Highlight duplicate rows in a sheet – map and reduce
- Highlight duplicate rows in a sheet – map, filter and every
- How to determine what kind of object something is in Apps Script
- How to get stats about youtube videos in your channel with apps script
- How to pass non stringifyable objects to html service
- How to transpose spreadsheet data with apps script
- Identify duplicates on Drive
- Identifying hosted files
- Implementing a client side progress bar reporting on server side work for htmlService
- Importing Predictwise data
- Improved namespace pattern for Apps Script
- Including the stack in custom errors
- JavaScript closures – how, where and why
- JavaScript currying and functional programming
- JavaScript currying and functional programming – even more
- JavaScript recursion primer
- JSONP and JSON and Google Apps Script webapps
- Loading large JSON datasets into BigQuery with Apps Script
- Logging differences in strings in Apps Script
- Measuring library load speed
- Migrating user and script properties
- Minimizing maps directionfinder api calls
- More client server code sharing
- More recursion – parents and children
- More sheet data fiddling
- Multiple inserts in Fusion Tables
- Namespaces in libraries and scripts
- Normalizing the header level of blank paragraphs
- Optimizing sheet formatting with Apps Script
- Optimizing showing and hiding rows and columns
- Organizing asynchronous calls to google.script.run
- Organizing parallel streams of server calls with google.script.run promises
- Parallel process orchestration with HtmlService
- Passing data to html service
- Patching site html
- Populating sheets with API data using a Fiddler
- Proxy jsonp
- Pseudo binding in HTML service
- Queuing asynchronous tasks with rate limit and concurrency constraints
- Recursive async functions
- Removing duplicate paragraphs
- Reporting file, function and line number in Apps Script
- Resumable uploads – writing large files to Drive with Apps Script
- Reusing html stuff between Apps Script projects
- Roughly matching text
- Serving apps script to JavaScript app
- Sharing code between client and server
- Shortcut for adding nested properties to a JavaScript object
- Simple server side polling
- Sorting Google Sheet DisplayValues
- Squeezing more into (and getting more out of) Cache services
- Styling Gmail html tables
- Summarizing emails to a sheet
- SunCalc
- TimeSimmer : An adjustable timer for apps that need to speed up or slow down time
- Transform dates for add-on transfer
- Transposing sheet data
- Traversing a tree
- Unique values with data fiddler
- Unnesting data to sheet values
- Untangling with promises
- Use Drive properties to find app files
- Use promise instead of callback for settimeout
- Using Advanced Drive service to convert files
- Using Apps Script for xml json conversion
- Using array formulas to improve performance
- Using crossfilter with Google Apps Script
- Using D3 in server side Gas
- Using es6 promises server side in Apps Script
- Using Es6 with Apps Script
- Using exponential backoff with github api – dealing with data “in preparation”
- Using Google sheets via Bigquery from Apps Script
- Using named locks with Google Apps Scripts
- Using promises to orchestrate Html service polling
- Using promises with apps script
- Using the Itunes API with Apps Script
- Using the slideshare API from Apps Script
- Using timing functions to get insight into Sheets
- Watching docs for changes
- Watching for server side changes from the client html service
- Why Base64
- Zipping to make stuff fit in cache or properties service.
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