More Google services available in Apps Script
One of things that makes Apps Script great is its ability to act as a hub for various types of Google data. In addition to our built-in services for popular products such as Gmail, Drive, Docs, and Calendar, we also provide a line of advanced Google services that let you use existing Google APIs such as Analytics and Tasks. Today, we're expanding that family of advanced services to include the following:
- Admin SDK Directory service
- Admin SDK Reports service
- Fusion Tables service
- Google+ Domains service
- Mirror service
- YouTube service
- YouTube Analytics service
From Google Apps administrators and data-heads to Glass Explorers and YouTube content creators, this collection of new services has something for everyone. Getting started with advanced services is easy, since we take cake of the authorization for you and even provide autocomplete in the script editor.
While our built-in services are hand-crafted for ease-of-use, our advanced services are automatically generated from existing public Google APIs. They provide access to the full power of the underlying API but can be slightly more difficult to use. Let's look at some sample code that searches for YouTube videos with the keyword "dogs".
function searchByKeyword() {
var part = 'id,snippet';
var optionalArgs = {
q: 'dogs',
maxResults: 25
};
var results = YouTube.Search.list(part, optionalArgs);
for (var i = 0; i < results.items.length; i++) {
var item = results.items[i];
Logger.log('[%s] Title: %s', item.id.videoId, item.snippet.title);
}
}
This function uses the YouTube.Search.list() method, which has a required
parameter part and optional parameters q and maxResults, among others.
Required parameters are passed individually as method arguments, while optional
parameters are passed as one key-value map. The full list of parameters this
method accepts can be found in the YouTube API's reference
documentation.
We're also changing our advanced services to behave more like vanilla
JavaScript, so that it's easier to reference the APIs' existing documentation.
You can now pass native JavaScript objects into these services' methods, and
access the results using regular dot-notation. Below is some sample code that
adds a new user to a Google Apps domain.
function addUser() {
var user = {
primaryEmail: 'liz@example.com',
name: {
givenName: 'Elizabeth',
familyName: 'Smith'
},
// Generate a random password string.
password: Math.random().toString(36)
};
user = AdminDirectory.Users.insert(user);
Logger.log('User %s created with ID %s.', user.primaryEmail, user.id);
}
Notice that the user resource is constructed as a plain object literal, and the ID of the created user is accessed via dot-notation. The legacy getter/setter notation will continue to work but will no longer appear in autocomplete.
Finally, it's worth reminding that advanced Google services must be enabled in each script that uses them. This involves toggling them on once in the script editor under Resources > Advanced Google services and again in the associated Google Developers Console project.
| Eric Koleda profile Eric is a Developer Programs Engineer based in NYC on the Google Apps Script team. He's previously worked with the AdWords API and enterprise content management software. |