How to automate Google related tasks • Hacker News Board

Re: How to automate Google related tasks

#21

Post by askvictor » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 10:08 AM UTC

Improvotter wrote: post #18

Apps Script is honestly pretty terrible simply because the "IDE" you're working in is terrible. There is no integration with any proper IDE or text editor. It's using ES5 iirc when it could easily support more advanced Javascript versions or when it could allow you to use Typescript. I only sometimes use it out of necessity, but it remains a huge pain.

Yeah, the IDE is painful. I think there are ways to expose the script files in drive and edit them outside (possibly even debug in eclipse in a very roundabout way? I might be dreaming). I wish they would integrate with jetbrains (as they've done with android)

Re: How to automate Google related tasks

#22

Post by amelius » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 11:42 AM UTC

chasontherobot wrote: post #10

Recently had to use Apps script to count the number of files in a number of Google drives folder, it was pretty annoying. The Drive API doesn't actually expose that information at all so I had to loop through the files with a counter to get the information I needed, but that was so inefficient that I got timeout errors for anything but the smallest of folders. Unfortunately I had to resort to their Python API which w…

And this is called progress. Sharing files on a central computer system (mainframe), and efficient scripting (e.g. VMS,Unix,etc) was solved in the 70s.

Re: How to automate Google related tasks

#23

Post by TheQwerty » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 1:00 PM UTC

askvictor wrote: post #21

Improvotter wrote: post #18

Apps Script is honestly pretty terrible simply because the "IDE" you're working in is terrible. There is no integration with any proper IDE or text editor. It's using ES5 iirc when it could easily support more advanced Javascript versions or when it could allow you to use Typescript. I only sometimes use it out of necessity, but it remains a huge pain.

Yeah, the IDE is painful. I think there are ways to expose the script files in drive and edit them outside (possibly even debug in eclipse in a very roundabout way? I might be dreaming). I wish they would integrate with jetbrains (as they've done with android)

There is this: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/clasp

I've not used it and I have a feeling it doesn't really help one take full advantage of their IDE of choice but it might still beat the online editor.

Re: How to automate Google related tasks

#24

Post by fiatjaf » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 1:01 PM UTC

andmalc wrote: post #9

fiatjaf wrote: post #6

Apps script is very good and powerful, and it's been around since a very long time ago. It seems they'll try to push it again now. My problem with "automating Google-related tasks" was always the complexity of their APIs, specially authorization, and the need to use those enourmously complex SDKs they provide. Sometimes I want to just do some curl calls. In the case of Google Apps Script, perhaps it would've been bet…

Their Clasp tool lets you code Apps Script from your own editor: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/clasp

Whoa, I didn't knew that. It looks great. I'll try it.

Re: How to automate Google related tasks

#25

Post by sudshekhar » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 1:22 PM UTC

pbreit wrote: post #15

Google Sheets + Apps Script + UrlFetchApp[1] is a very powerful API runner enabling you to loop through a set of Google Sheet rows to make API calls. The unofficial APIs exposed by single-page-apps are pretty easy to reverse engineer, too. 1: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/url-fetc...

Can you give some examples where this combination was more effective than using a standard file and shell/python

Re: How to automate Google related tasks

#26

Post by verinus » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 1:26 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #22

chasontherobot wrote: post #10

Recently had to use Apps script to count the number of files in a number of Google drives folder, it was pretty annoying. The Drive API doesn't actually expose that information at all so I had to loop through the files with a counter to get the information I needed, but that was so inefficient that I got timeout errors for anything but the smallest of folders. Unfortunately I had to resort to their Python API which w…

And this is called progress. Sharing files on a central computer system (mainframe), and efficient scripting (e.g. VMS,Unix,etc) was solved in the 70s.

pretty much everything connected with the web is a leap backwards in many ways...not only the programming language and tooling ;)

Re: How to automate Google related tasks

#27

Post by pbreit » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 10:47 PM UTC

sudshekhar wrote: post #25

pbreit wrote: post #15

Google Sheets + Apps Script + UrlFetchApp[1] is a very powerful API runner enabling you to loop through a set of Google Sheet rows to make API calls. The unofficial APIs exposed by single-page-apps are pretty easy to reverse engineer, too. 1: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/url-fetc...

Can you give some examples where this combination was more effective than using a standard file and shell/python

When you have to massage, filter, sort, manipulate the data prior. Which for me is almost always the point.

Re: How to automate Google related tasks

#28

Post by patrickdavey » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 8:51 PM UTC

patrickdavey wrote: post #17

All I want is an API for Google inbox so that I can programmatically make tasks.

To clarify after Bryan very kindly sent me a link to the tasks api [1], what I'm really after is an interface to the "reminders" functionality in Google Inbox (basically tasks-lite)

[1] https://developers.google.com/apps-script/advanced/tasks