@barecool/vue-cli-plugin-gas-ab

Work In Progress

This is a Vue CLI plugin that will help you to setup a Google Apps Script project using Vue as the front-end tool. The plugin already integrates clasp commands. For example, it will initialize your project by executing clasp clone or clasp create. It will also enable you to bundle and deploy your code by automatically syncing the manifest file, building your code for production to the dist folder and running clasp push or clasp deploy.

This plugins expects you to have at least version 2.3.0 of Clasp installed.

This plugin is based on https://github.com/ijusplab/vue-cli-plugin-gas

Setup

1. Install Clasp globally (optional)

npm -g install @google/clasp // or yarn global add @google/clasp

2. Create your Vue Project

vue create <project_name>
cd <project_name>

3. Add the plugin

vue add @barecool/vue-cli-plugin-gas-ab

4. Project's structure

All server-side code must be placed inside the src/server folder as js or ts files and will not be bundled by webpack, but ts files will be processed by ts2gas during compilation.

Any constants you define in your .env file starting with VUE_APP or GAS_APP will be available for you inside server-side code as properties of process.env. But remember they are not actually constants, but merely placeholders for preprocessing.

Your Vue app will be the front-end. It will be bundled and inlined in your index.html in production. Vue, Vuex and Vue-Router (in case you decide to plug them in) are all consumed as node modules during development, but loaded via CDN in production using the webpack-cdn-plugin.

5. google.script API mocking

Any global functions you create inside server-side files will be automatically mocked during development, so that your calls to google.script.run won't break.

All your calls to methods in google.script.history, google.script.host and google.script.url should also work just fine as mocked versions, following the APIs described in Google Apps Script's HTML service documentation.

The google global object will be available in the Vue instance as $google. Thus, the right way to invoke google.script.run inside your components is by calling this.$google.script.run.

The Vue instance will also have the boolean property $devMode, which will be true when process.env.NODE_ENV !== 'production', as well as three custom methods: $callLibraryMethod, $log and $errorHandler, which are intended to work together with the callback, log and errorHandler server-side functions.

The first of these methods is useful to call methods of libraries you use as dependencies in your server-side code or of any other global namespace. You should pass to it the following parameters: library:string, method:string and args:array. It returns a Promise.

The $log and $errorHandler methods are useful if you want to send client-side debug messages or errors to the Stackdriver Logging console. They don't have return values.

IMPORTANT: The $log method does not work in production.

6. Environment variables

You can change your project's name and favicon in the .env file by setting the following variables: VUE_APP_TITLE and VUE_APP_FAVICON. The value of VUE_APP_FAVICON should be a url to an external public resource.

7. vue-cli-service commands

The plugin introduces five new commands to the vue-cli-service: deploy, login, pull, push, syncmanifest and watch.

command	description	options
change-timezone	Syncs manifest file and changes timezone in local manifest.	-
deploy	Syncs manifest file, builds for production and pushes the output to Google Drive under a new version. Runs part of syncmanifest, vu-cli-service build, clasp push and clasp deploy behind the scenes.	--description
login	Checks if you are already authenticated with Google and authenticates you if you are not.	-
pull	Pulls all remote files and places them into the local dist folder. Runs clasp pull behind the scenes.	-
push	Syncs manifest file, builds for development and pushes the output to Google Drive. Runs part of syncmanifest, vu-cli-service build and clasp push behind the scenes.	-
syncmanifest	Pulls remote manifest and merges it with your local manifest file, so that in the next push or deploy you may upload the most recent version of the file. In the case of conflict, local changes will prevail. Runs clasp pull and clasp push behind the scenes.	-
watch	Syncs manifest file, builds for development in watch mode and pushes the output to Google Drive each time webpack recompiles. Runs part of syncmanifest, vu-cli-service build --watch, clasp pull and clasp push behind the scenes.	-

IMPORTANT:

1. Be careful while using deploy, push or watch in a cloned project, because it will overwrite all your code in Google Drive.
2. The pull command will not update source code.

/*
  usage:
*/
vue-cli-service change-timezone // or npx vue-cli-service change-timezone
vue-cli-service deploy // or npx vue-cli-service deploy
vue-cli-service deploy --description "This is a new version" // or npx vue-cli-service deploy --description "This is a new version"
vue-cli-service login // or npx vue-cli-service login
vue-cli-service pull // or npx vue-cli-service pull
vue-cli-service push // or npx vue-cli-service push
vue-cli-service syncmanifest // or npx vue-cli-service syncmanifest

By tweaking the scripts property of your package.json file you may combine these new commands among themselves and with Vue CLI natives serve and build.

8. npm scripts

This plugin already adds the following scripts to your project's package.json:

script	commands executed	description
change-timezone	vue-cli-service change-timezone	changes timezone in local manifest
deploy	vue-cli-service deploy	builds for production and pushes the output to Google Drive under a new version (accepts the --description option)
inspect	vue-cli-service inspect --mode development > wp.dev.output.js && vue-cli-service inspect --mode production > wp.prod.output.js	pipes development and production webpack configurations into the files wp.dev.output.js and wp.prod.output.js
pull	vue-cli-service pull	pulls all remote files and places them into the local dist folder (it will not update source code)
push	vue-cli-service push	builds for development and pushes the output to Google Drive
watch	vue-cli-service watch	builds for development in watch mode and pushes the output to Google Drive each time webpack recompile

The wp.dev.output.js and wp.prod.output.js files produced by the inspect script will be already scaped for linting and version control in .eslintignore and .gitignore.

IMPORTANT:

1. Be careful while using deploy, push or watch in a cloned project, because it will overwrite all your code in Google Drive.
   The plugin intercepts webpack's compilation process in two cases:
2. When running Vue CLI native serve command, in order to update the mocked google.script.run functions list; and
3. When running the watch command, in order to pull changes to Google Drive each time webpack recompile.
4. In order to push code in production without changing version number, you just need to use npm run push --mode production.

/*
  usage:
*/
npm run change-timezone // or yarn change-timezone
npm run deploy // or yarn deploy
npm run deploy --description "This is a new version" // or yarn deploy --description "This is a new version"
npm run inspect // or yarn inspect
npm run pull // or yarn pull
npm run push // or yarn push
npm run push --mode production // or yarn push --mode production
npm run watch // or yarn watch

If you want to use these commands otherwise or wish to know more about Clasp commands' general usage and restrictions, please refer directly to the Clasp documentation.