INFORMATION

Interact with your Google Docs List from Apps Script

We recently added a new feature to Apps Script: the ability to interact with your Google Docs List. With this new integration, scripts can create, rename, or move files and folders in your Google Docs. In addition, scripts can now create, modify, and clear plain-text files and search through your documents for a specified query string.

For instance, take a company whose website is hosted on Google Sites. They have a Specials page where they want to list seasonal sales depending on upcoming holidays. They store the details about the seasonal sales in plain-text files that are saved in their Google Docs List. By using the Google Docs List and and Sites services within Apps Script along with time-based triggers to run the script once per day, they can keep their Specials page updated automatically. Here’s a code snippet that demonstrates how to update the Specials page:

//The Mother’s Day sale runs from May 1 - May 7, 2011
var MOTHERS_DAY_START = new Date("May 1, 2011");
var MOTHERS_DAY_END = new Date("May 7, 2011");
//The Valentine’s Day sale runs from Feb 6 - Feb 13, 2011
var VALENTINES_DAY_START = new Date("February 6, 2011");
var VALENTINES_DAY_END = new Date("February 13, 2011");

function updateSpecials() {
  var today = new Date();
  var site = SitesApp.getSite("example.com", "giftshop");
  // Get all the web pages in the Site
  var pages = site.getWebPages();
  // Loop through the web pages to find the specials page
  for (var i = 0; i < pages.length; i++) {
    if (pages[i].getPageName() == "specials") {
      var page = pages[i]; 
    }  
  }
  // Set up the default wording for the specials page
  var pageText = "There are no specials at this time.";

  // If today’s date is within the Mother’s Day sale range
  if (today >= MOTHERS_DAY_START && today <= MOTHERS_DAY_END) {
    // Find the sale text that’s stored in the file mom.txt
    pageText = DocsList.find("mom.txt")[0].getContentAsString();
  }
  // If today’s date is within the Valentine’s Day sale range
  else if (today >= VALENTINES_START && today <= VALENTINES_END ) {
    // Find the sale text that’s stored in the file valentines.txt
    var pageText = DocsList.find("valentines.txt")[0].getContentAsString()   
  }
  // Set the content of the specials page
  page.setContent(pageText);  
}​

If this script is then set up to run using a trigger that calls it at the same time each day, then the Specials page will be kept automatically up-to-date.

To help you learn more, weve created a tutorial that demonstrates how to search and display information about files, create files, and read content from files.

Note that certain features of the DocsList service, such as creating files, are only available to Google Apps accounts. For complete information on interacting with your Google Docs List using Apps Script, see the DocsList Service documentation.

We look forward to seeing how you use this integration. If youd like to learn more about Apps Script and meet the Apps Script team in person, join us at the upcoming Apps Script hackathon in New York City on June 24.

Posted by Jan Kleinert, Google Developer Relations