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How to automate Google related tasks

developers.google.com

1–10 of 28 posts

Re: How to automate Google related tasks

#2
Good is slowly becoming Microsoft. Just when we finally have a handle on worms spread through Word and Excel Macros, now we will have Google Doc Macros.It will be interesting to see what kind of security vs usability we will see. Also, with these Google macros, will an abusive macro that spams, get you locked out of your Google account and unable to access your documents?

Re: How to automate Google related tasks

#3

Good is slowly becoming Microsoft. Just when we finally have a handle on worms spread through Word and Excel Macros, now we will have Google Doc Macros.It will be interesting to see what kind of security vs usability we will see. Also, with these Google macros, will an abusive macro that spams, get you locked out of your Google account and unable to access your documents?

making some of the same mistakes that MS made != becoming MS.

But yes I hope they're being careful with this.

Re: How to automate Google related tasks

#4

Good is slowly becoming Microsoft. Just when we finally have a handle on worms spread through Word and Excel Macros, now we will have Google Doc Macros.It will be interesting to see what kind of security vs usability we will see. Also, with these Google macros, will an abusive macro that spams, get you locked out of your Google account and unable to access your documents?

MS's issues with macros was my first thought as well.

I'd really like to hear about their plans security wise with this.

Re: How to automate Google related tasks

#5

Good is slowly becoming Microsoft. Just when we finally have a handle on worms spread through Word and Excel Macros, now we will have Google Doc Macros.It will be interesting to see what kind of security vs usability we will see. Also, with these Google macros, will an abusive macro that spams, get you locked out of your Google account and unable to access your documents?

Google Apps Script has been around since 2009...

Re: How to automate Google related tasks

#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 better if they came up with a coding environment separate from Google Drive.

Re: How to automate Google related tasks

#7

Good is slowly becoming Microsoft. Just when we finally have a handle on worms spread through Word and Excel Macros, now we will have Google Doc Macros.It will be interesting to see what kind of security vs usability we will see. Also, with these Google macros, will an abusive macro that spams, get you locked out of your Google account and unable to access your documents?

Google Apps Script has been around since 2009...

... and has had security incidents

http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2012/04/google-attack-...

Re: How to automate Google related tasks

#8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Apps Script has been around since 2009...

... and has had security incidents http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2012/04/google-attack-...

I don't see any mention of Apps Script in that blog post.

Re: How to automate Google related tasks

#9
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

Re: How to automate Google related tasks

#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 was totally awful in its own way, but at least I didn't have to worry about timeout errors and could get the job done.

Google apps script is probably good for doing stuff in spreadsheets or documents, but its use as an API across Google's platform really needs some work.

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