How to Clone Google App Script Code to Your Local Computer

I’m starting a new project, and the requirements for this project is to write some Google App Script, copy the source code over to BitBucket. Thankfully there’s an easy way to store Google App Script locally to your computer and then push those changes back to Google as well as git commit changes and have the code stored safely on a remote repository.

Here’s how you too can set up your computer and environment up.

Install google/clasp

To install google/clasp jump onto your terminal, and if you haven’t (as I haven’t yet), initialise npm in your folder:

$ npm init
This utility will walk you through creating a package.json file.
...

After progressing through all the prompts I then run the command to install google/clasp by npm install clasp:

$ npm install clasp
Installing @google/clasp...
Installed @google/clasp@2.3.0

Your terminal prompt should inform you of the success of your google/clasp module installation.

Login to clasp

To have google/clasp know where to pull and push scripts to it needs to connect to your Gmail account. Therefore, the first command you need to run once you’ve successfully installed it is clasp login:

$ clasp login

A link then pops up underneath the prompt and when you click on it you will be redirected to a Google login screen where you will need to enter your credentials and provide the necessary permissions for the script to function properly. You will know everything is successful when you see back in your terminal window:

Authorization successful.

Clone script

If you have already started a Google App Script project you may be able to clone it to your current project. There are two ways you can try to pull in a project’s script:

1. Try clasp clone and then select from the options presented by using your up and down arrow keys to navigate through the list.

$ clasp clone
? Clone which script? (Use arrow keys)
> ABC ...

If, however, you have many scripts, and the script you’re looking for isn’t presented you will need to exit from the prompt window using Ctrl-C.

1. Enter the specific Script ID as a parameter to your clone command, like so:

$ clasp clone ABC123...

Where ABC123... is the Script ID you can obtain by opening up your Google App Script console for the project you’re hoping to clone and clicking on File > Project Properties. From the modal window that pops up, copy the Script ID hash.

Ignore Files

If needed you might want to exclude certain files from clasp pushing them into your script folder in Google. If so, create a .claspignore file and populate it with files you don’t want to push up.

My .claspignore looks as follows:

.DS_Store
node_modules/**
node_modules/**/.*/**
node_modules/**/.*
.idea
.git

Update code

To update your code on the Google Server you just need to push your code back up.

$ clasp push

You can check your code is working by opening your project’s Google App Script code.

Conclusion

In this short article you’ve learned the following:

1. How to copy a project in Google Apps to your local computer using the clasp npm package.
2. How to exclude certain files and folders from your project.
3. How to make local changes and push your changes up to Google Apps.

If you have your code wrapped as a library which other code references you’ll need to create a version and then reference the new version in your code dependencies.

If you’d like to discover how you can create a library for your common Google Apps code, or to prevent someone from editing your code on your Google Sheets or other Google Apps, then check out my next post on creating a Google Apps library.