Apps Script with TypeScript & claps CLI to develop locally

claps allows to manage App Script projets in a local environment. You can create and publish add-ons for products like Google Sheets, Google Docs et al. using the command line.

clasp automatically converts flat file structure available on script.google.com into regular folders.

sudo npm i -g grpc @google/clasp --unsafe-perm

Before using any other command you must first log in using claps login. It will then store the credentials in .clasprc.json file.

clasp clone accepts either a script ID or its URL.

clasp push pushes all local files to script.google.com and it overwrites the previous versions. Optionally, there is a --watch parameter that watches for changes and pushes every few seconds.

clasp can be also used to enable or disable specific Google APIs with apis subcommand

clasp apis enable drive

There is a neat tutorial by Google for claps.

VSCode can autocomplete appsscript.json and .clasp.json if you specify the following JSON schemas in User Settings.

"json.schemas": [
  {
    "fileMatch": [
      "appsscript.json"
    ],
    "url": "http://json.schemastore.org/appsscript"
  },
  {
    "fileMatch": [
      ".clasp.json"
    ],
    "url": "http://json.schemastore.org/clasp"
  }
]

TypeScript is can be compiled to Apps Script with claps. It currently supports TypeScript 2.9.2. claps allows both new and existing Apps Script projects to use TypeScript.

Apps Script's runtime is different than Node/browser, e.g. there is no window object, export and require cannot be used the same way as in Node.

In project's folder, install TypeScript definitions for Apps Script

npm i -S @types/google-apps-script

In order to block the usage of non Apps Script features, create a file called jsconfig.json

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "noLib": true
  }
}

You can now start writing TypeScript for Apps Script project by either creating .ts files or by changing the extension from .js to .ts for existing ones. As you push to the Apps Script server using claps push, clasp transpiles ES6+ into ES3 using ts2gas.