Google Apps Script: Basic Beginners Guide to Using Strings in Code

Google Apps Script, Javascript, strings

Hey there, Yagi here, you’ve probably stumbled across this page from a link from one of my other in-depth tutorials. This is just a quick primer on Javascript Strings in Google Apps Script for the non-coder.

Here’s a bare-bones example of how a string of text might come together in your code:

The resulting log would  look like this:

strings in Google Apps Script

 

Strings, +, \n and arrays[value]

If you are unfamiliar with basic string syntax and joining (concatenation), basically you can write text inside a single (‘) or double(“) quotation marks. For example:

To join two strings together you can concatenate them with a plus sign (+).

Just remember to put a space inside your quotation mars at the end if you are going to join another word or the words will not be spaced and theywillbealltogether.

This is handy when you want to put things on separate lines in your code but it won’t be on a separate line when it is displayed. You can use the newline escape sequence \n to return the next part of a string to a new line.

To insert a custom variable into a string, one fairly beginner-friendly approach is to put it between two plus signs.

You can see in the meatz variable above, we have put our two meat items in an array. An array always starts at zero (0). So to get chicken we would do, meatz[0].

Meow get on back to your main tutorial and get learn’n.

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~Yagi

Google Apps Script – Adding a Unique ID in a Cell on Edit of an Adjacent Cell Using Time

Google Apps Script, onEdit, Date, Google Sheets

Here is the scenario. You have a small business and you want to store your customers, products and sales information on separate Google sheets.

You’re probably going to have someone from your staff enter new customers, products are sales transactions.

We know if we get them to enter unique ID’s in manually that mistakes are going to get made. So how about we automate this process with unique ID’s based on date-timestamps.

uniqueID DateTimestamp Google Sheets

Why use a date-timestamp to create a unique ID?

Every year is unique. Every day, hour, minute, second and millisecond of that year creates a unique number. This mean that a new unique id will be create every millisecond for us.

Wow! Wow! Wow! Yagi! Just hold it one damn minute! You could  have multiple results each millisecond that would each be the same number!

Well, true if we were running a loop generating and publishnig our date-timestamp, we could have multiple numbers. However, we are generating this unique ID as an onEdit function when the user adds some information in Google Sheets to a cell and an adjacent cell  returns our unique number.

The user’s input and then the calls to and from the server to the Google Sheet will be sufficiently slow enough not to have a number generated multiple times a millisecond, so we are safe there.

We have the main idea of what we are planning, let’s move onto the example.

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Creating a Google Sheet Geo Map From Form Data and Posting it to WordPress – Part 3 of Google Forms in WordPress with Live Chart Project (Updated Feb, 2022)

Google Forms, Google Sheets (IMPORTXML), XML Path, WordPress

Note: This is part 3 of a larger project. Each part of the project is self-contained should you wish to reference just one particular aspect. Alternatively, you can follow along with the project to practise workflow and learn about Google Forms, Sheets, WordPress integration and a little HTML5 and Javascript. You can access the beginning of the project here: 

Creating a Short Google Form Survey and Embedding it into a WordPress Post – Part 1 of Google Forms in WordPress with Live Chart Project

Embedding a Live Google Sheet Graph that Updates Every 30 Seconds into a WordPress Post – Part 2 of Google Forms in WordPress with Live Chart Project

Where We Left Off

After creating and embedding a Google Form into our WordPress post, in our last tutorial, we added a graph of all the results from the survey that updates every 30 seconds.

In this tutorial, we are going to add a country selection to our form and then embed a country heat map into our post.

Geo Heatmap Google

Creating a Country Drop-Down List in Google Forms

The Countries List

Getting The Country Data

First off, we need to find a list of countries. I’m going to grab that from https://www.listofcountriesoftheworld.com.  I could probably just copy the list and paste them in but I might want to use the list of countries again as a reference for other calculations in my sheet so I am going to go to my Google Sheet that is connected to my form and create a new Sheet tab named Countries.

Continue reading “Creating a Google Sheet Geo Map From Form Data and Posting it to WordPress – Part 3 of Google Forms in WordPress with Live Chart Project (Updated Feb, 2022)”

Embedding a Live Google Sheet Graph that Updates Every 30 Seconds into a WordPress Post – Part 2 of Google Forms in WordPress with Live Chart Project

Google Sheets, Forms, WordPress,  HTML5, a touch of Javascript

Note: This is part 2 of a larger project. Each part of the project is self-contained if you wish to reference just one particular aspect. Alternatively, you can follow along with the project to practise workflow and learn about Google Forms, Sheets, WordPress integration and a little HTML5 and Javascript. You can access the beginning of the project here: 

Creating a Short Google Form Survey and Embedding it into a WordPress Post – Part 1 of Google Forms in WordPress with Live Chart Project

Where We Left Off

In our previous post, I showed you how to create a Google Form and embed it into a WordPress post. The end result looked like this.

Feel free and complete the survey for fun and the unadulterated joy of surveys!

In this tutorial, we will add a live Google pie chart of our results that updates every 30 seconds so that our viewer, …erh…you, can see the results as they come in.

Here is what our Chart will look like.

Continue reading “Embedding a Live Google Sheet Graph that Updates Every 30 Seconds into a WordPress Post – Part 2 of Google Forms in WordPress with Live Chart Project”

Simple Code for AB Testing Affiliate Recommendations in a WordPress Sidebar HTML Widget

Javascript, WordPress, Your Affiliate Program’s Campaign Link

The Story

When I created Yagisanatode.com my goal was to provide a resource for myself and others to reference on all the coding projects I work on. Since it’s beginnings in October 2017 I have seen a huge rise in my readership and am so pleased to see a growing community in my comments sections. 

Your support has really helped me to produce more and, I hope, produce better content. Thanks.

 

Just take me to the code!!!

 

Continue reading “Simple Code for AB Testing Affiliate Recommendations in a WordPress Sidebar HTML Widget”