One thing I’ve found you need when developing for Google Apps Script is a timer. Everything is pretty slow ( see Optimizing access to sheet values) so you need to dig into exactly what is good […]
Why so slow? Note – this article was written when Apps Script first came out. Since that time, the speed of Sheets access has increased significantly, but I leave this article here for interest. The Data […]
JavaScript does not really have the equivalent of a VBA collection. Since the use of collections is very significant in this project, the best approach is to emulate a collection object in javaScript so that […]
Arguments to procedures in VBA can be optional, and optionally they can have a default value. For example We can also test for the presence of a variant argument by using isMissing(). See Getting Started with […]
Things to look out for As you work with javaScript (most of these gotchas will be about javaScript rather than apps script specifically), you’ll scratch your head about a few things. I know I did. […]
You can find the code (its a work in progress) and test data in the VBA to Google Apps Script Roadmapper project download To minimize the amount of work in converting from VBA to Google Apps […]
In Understanding Scope for VBA I showed some examples of the visibility of functions and variables across modules and procedures inside a VBA project. If you are moving to Apps Script (or JavaScript) from VBA, you’ll need […]
The VBA API generates REST API requests from your VBA function calls, and needs a Google Apps Script handler to service those requests by communicating with the required scriptDB instance. You can have multiple handlers, […]
When converting from VBA, unless you are abandoning VBA, it’s just as well to mimic some of the functions that are missing from GAS so that you can minimize your script Conversion work. Here is […]
There is also a Google Apps script version of Getting data out of scraperWiki. It uses the mcpher library and the test data and examples can be found in this Google Document There is a rest library entry to […]
This describes how to authenticate with github using Goa, as described in Oauth2 for Apps Script in a few lines of code (which you should read first for background). The library, cGoa, is available under this project […]
Format of Info.json Each project directory contains an info file that describes the scripts for this project. It is also used to decide whether the sources in the project need to be refreshed. To force […]
Obsolete This post is now pretty much obsolete. As of April 2016, the dependency service seemed to disappear. Next attempt was via a hacked autocomplete service to discover dependencies, which worked until 2018. Now this […]
In Getting your apps scripts to Github I introduced the idea of using Drive JSON API for apps script to get your source code out of the Apps Script environment as a first step to […]
mcpher Library All Google apps script library code is in the mcpher library. If you already know about google sctipt libraries you can get it as below, and read about it in this post. Project Key […]
For this site, I usually create a Google Apps Script version and a VBA version of the projects and libraries discussed. This is not so hard, since there are utility libraries in both languages, so it’s […]
Create a module that stores some test data in a public scriptdb. In Hosting your public scriptdb you will have created a public scriptDB, Here’s how to store data in a public scriptdb. We are going to […]
Because database abstraction is independent of the underlying database selected, the only difference in syntax for operations is for opening the database. That means that copying between databases is straightforward. Here’s an example of copying between a […]
Because database abstraction is independent of the underlying database selected, the only difference in syntax for operations is for opening the database. That means that copying between databases is straightforward. Here’s an example of copying between a […]
If you followed Do something useful with GAS in 5 minutes, you’ll already know how to use a spreadsheet as a database. This time, here’s how to search your mail for some threads on a particular subject […]
If you followed Do something useful with GAS in 5 minutes, you’ll already know how to use a spreadsheet as a database. This time we are going to get data from Fusion Tables, play around with […]
If you followed Do something useful with GAS in 5 minutes, you’ll already know how to use a spreadsheet as a database. Here’s how to use that along with Google Analytics to get all your profile […]
If you followed Do something useful with GAS in 5 minutes, you’ll already know how to use a spreadsheet as a database. You may want to move on to using a real database as a back […]
There’s no getting away from the fact that Apps Script is slower than the equivalent client based JavaScript processing. It is fundamentally synchronous in implementation, and also has limits on processing time and a host […]
As the scriptDB deprecation date approaches, you may have decided which database to move to and are making plans for the switch over. The problem is though that if you have many thousands of records […]
dependencyForce If you use a lot of libraries, sometimes things get a bit messy. You delete an old version to clean up and suddenly notice a few days later that things stop working because it’s […]
This describes how to get an access token from the Goa library using a service account, as described in Oauth2 for Apps Script in a few lines of code (which you should read first for background). If […]
I don’t use jQuery, neither in regular webapps nor in Apps Script HtmlService apps. No particular reason – I just prefer to use vanilla JavaScript. I often use d3.js, mainly for visualization as in these examples elsewhere […]
The BigQuiz app uses the People API to identify who is using it so that it can keep track of game and category scores. I could have used the Gplus api – which has an Apps Script advanced service, […]
The data for BigQuiz app is held in BigQuery. In Loading large JSON datasets into BigQuery with Apps Script I showed how you could maintain data in BigQuery with Apps Script, but now when I come to use it, […]
Normally when you write code for apps that have a server and client component, you write the code for one or the other. The client javascript code goes in an html file (usually called something […]
The BigQuiz app uses Firebase for keep track of the question, category and game scores of individual players. In Firebase custom authentication with goa I showed how to use Goa to manage authentication for Firebase. This firebase access library works with […]
I’ve found that I have completed applications lying around the site, with no good way of finding them. I’m starting this section to walk through complete Apps Script Applications, which cover a number of concepts. […]
Project conversion We will use the Roadmap Generation project as a model for learning how to take an existing, complex project and convert it from VBA to Google Apps Script. This is implemented as a one liner […]
Color manipulation library scripts First off for this project we are going to need to figure out how to manipulate colors in Google Apps Script. As per the approach in Roadmapper migration my objective is to make […]
This is an interesting d3.js and parse.com mashup of a number of topics covered on this site. The target is to build an app that Retrieves color scheme data from a parse.com database, much like […]
Project conversion We will use the Color ramp library project as the basis for this migration. The complete code can be found here Google Apps Script Color Ramp workbook Status of conversion General libraries You can read about these […]
Using the modules from Automatic documentation, here’s how to create a skeleton Google Apps Script Module directly from VBA modules or classes. It will also create basic JSDOC markup for documenting your new GAS module. You’ll find all […]
This describes how to migrate from cEzyOauth2 while using the Goa library as described in Oauth2 for Apps Script in a few lines of code (which you should read first for background). The library, cGoa, is available under this […]
In Drive JSON API for apps script I posted about an apps script library to help with the complexities of using the Drive SDK instead of the Apps Script DriveApp service. It needs Oauth2. Recently, the advanced […]
One of the most powerful features of Apps Script is the HTML service. This allows you to create html/JavaScript applications which can be served up as webapps, run in sidebars or as add-ons and created great […]
Apps Script is inherently synchronous – you cant do lots of things at once. Primarily to get round the execution limit, I did a science project using triggers for parallel processing but the triggers are fairly unpredictable […]
In Using Drive SDK I described why you might want to use the SDK JSON API rather than the built in Apps Script Drive Class. Before you can start with this you need to authorize your access with OAUTH2, […]
Migrating from VBA to Google Apps Script, or using them simultaneously can be hard to get started with. Although this material has been largely superceded by Going Gas, there’s stll some useful stuff here. […]
NOTE: ScriptDB is now deprecated. Please take a look at Database abstraction with google apps script for alternatives. The versatile scriptDB scriptDB is a javaScript object database for Google Apps Script project. It is a very useful feature to […]
The simplest way to get a token to use with a Google API is to borrow the one from Apps Script – assuming that you can persuade Apps Script to enter an authorization dialog for […]
Here’s a very simple, but nice looking meter in JavaScript. It’s configurable for a number of uses. There’s no need for any css (styling is by configuration) or additional libraries (it uses Chroma-js), as everything […]
Chord snip is an add-on for Google Sheets that creates a Chord diagram as you type, gives you the SVG code to embed it in a web site and the ability to embed it in […]
Parse.com parse.com as now been closed and moved to parseplatform.org. I will update the content of this page an move the back-end to this platform × Dismiss alert All code here is unprotected and free to […]
The Google Sheets V4 API is a very nice piece of work that exposes almost all of the Sheets object model in a REST API. Here’s a VBA wrapper for that API. I’ll add to […]
In Using the Google Sheets V4 API from VBA to integrate Sheets and Excel I showed a VBA API that could be used to talk to the Sheets API, to create some integration between Excel and Office. […]
As Google APIS continue to improve there are more ways to integrate them. The pages on this site reflect the technologies available at the time, so I thought I should bring together the pages that […]
In Using Google Maps I covered how to create various web based interactive maps. Of course many would like to use Excel to create maps, and the topic of chorpleth maps, has been covered many times by […]
I covered the mathematics of color matching in the VBA implementation in Find nearest color match. This is the Google Apps Script implementation. I’ll be using the CIEDE2000 algorithm to measure the distance between colors. One thing I […]
These articles are abridged from my book on Office to Apps migration. Going GAS, from VBA to Google Apps Script. Now available from O’Reilly or Amazon VBA does not naturally support JSON, but to be able to use this API (and […]
bruce mcpherson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://www.mcpher.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at code use guidelines