DevOps In Daily Life: Part 2

In part 1 we learnt about a workflow problem. In this, the 2nd part we are going to solve it, using some JavaScript code!

App Script

You can find the whole overview here. In short it is Google's flavour of JavaScript and a low-code platform to programmatically automate Google Suite line of products.

A few things which I discovered are

1. Notify us is someone accesses our document.
2. Send messages using 3rd party integration to Discord or Slack channels when an event is triggered. (say a Google Form is submitted.)
3. Export PDF and send mail of some reports.
4. Upload data and use the template of a Google Sheet to automatically populate it.
5. Export Resume and Cover Letter to PDF.

The list is only limited by your creativity. In the end, it comes down to programming!

PS:Additionally, you gained a basic understanding of continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD). Continuously integrating changes to the pro-docs; continuously delivering pro-docs to various platforms.

Technical Overview

It's time to start writing some code now. Here is what we are going to do in our code.

• Delete all the files in the folder.
• Generate a new Resume.PDF
• Generate a new CoverLetter.PDF

Steps

• STEP 1: Open App Script and start a new project. Maybe rename it.
• STEP 2: Remove the boiler plate code from the project
• STEP 3: Paste the following code

const resumeID = DriveApp.getFileById('Your Resume Doc ID')
const coverLetterID = DriveApp.getFileById('Your Cover Letter Doc ID')
const exportFolderID = 'Your Folder ID'

function myFunction() {
  const files = DriveApp.getFolderById(exportFolderID).getFiles()
  while (files.hasNext()) {
    files.next().setTrashed(true)
  }
  generateResume()
  generateCoverLetter()
}

function generateResume() {
  var blob = resumeID.getAs('application/pdf')
  DriveApp.getFolderById(exportFolderID)
    .createFile(blob)
    .setName('Resume')
}

function generateCoverLetter() {
  var blob = coverLetterID.getAs('application/pdf')
  DriveApp.getFolderById(exportFolderID)
    .createFile(blob)
    .setName('General Cover Letter')
}

• STEP 4: Replace the coverLetterID, resumeID and exportFolderID with your specific document IDs.

These ID are present in the URL when you open the document in a tab.

For example, https://docs.google.com/document/d/HelloThisIsTheIDOverHereAbCdEfGh123456/edit, we need the portion after d/ and before /edit. (This is what we require; HelloThisIsTheIDOverHereAbCdEfGh123456)

The folderID will be something like https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/HereIsTheFolderIDYouMustBeLookingFor the last section after folders/. (This is what we require;HereIsTheFolderIDYouMustBeLookingFor)

• STEP 5: Save the script, ctrl/cmd + s or you will see a save icon
• STEP 6: Run it! ctrl/cmd + r or you will see a play icon

On the first run, you will be asked for permission. Allow them and you will be good to go.
Here is some pictorial flow!

No errors in the execution log? Yes? Check the folder and you will have your PDF versions of the pro-docs.

Here, we end our automation. In the last and 3rd part(coming soon), we take a deeper dive into the code and try to understand what it means.