Google Apps Script makes it is easy for you to integrate data and functionality from Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, YouTube, and most other Google APIs. Apps Script is JavaScript under the hood so you don’t have to learn a new language and you don’t have to manage any servers since all your code runs on the Google Cloud, not your browser.
In this video tutorial, you’ll learn how to develop Google Apps Script projects locally on your computer inside Visual Studio Code. You can write your code in modern JavaScript, neatly organized in modules, and the build environment will use Babel and Webpack to transform your code into a version of JavaScript that is compatible with Apps Script.
Modern Development with Google Apps Script
There are quite a few advantages of having a local development environment vis-a-vis writing code in the Apps Script Cloud IDE.
- You can write code with ES6 Classes, Arrow Functions, Modules, Destructing and use all the other modern JavaScript features.
- The development experience inside VS Code is unmatched and tools like ESLint and Prettier make it easier for you to catch errors early in the development.
- The build and deployment process can be completely automated with npm scripts and CLASP, Google’s command-line utility for Apps Script.
- VS Code has built-in support for Git and integrates with source control providers like Github and Gitlab. It is, therefore, easier to track changes and restore previous versions of the code.
- You can quickly integrate JavaScript libraries like LoDash, Moment, Underscore and any of the NPM packages into your code.
- You can use modern frameworks like React, Vue.js and Angular to build the HTML frontend that connects to the backend with the Google Script Client API.
