Developing Google Apps Scripts Add-ons

This posts provides a brief review on the advanced techniques to develop, manage revisions, and publish Google Apps Scripts add-ons.

It is assumed that you have installed the node-google-apps-script that provides gapps and authenticated it with Google Apps engine, and uses Eclipse to manage the Google Apps Scripts add-ons projects.

Initiating a Project

• Create a new Google Apps Script project remotely at http://script.google.com, name the project properly, and allow it to save to the Google Drive. Note that the project will be stored in your Google drive. You should also now look up the the project id, which can be accomplished by at http://script.google.com, going to "File", and then "Project properties", finally, locating the "Script ID".
• Create a JavaScript project locally using Eclipse or some other IDEs of your choice.
• Initialize  the project with gapps locally as follows,
  

  
  gapps init my_project_id
  

  
  Note that my_project_id must be replaced by the actual project id.

Developing and Revision Management

You can now develop the project locally and manage it using any revision management system you prefer, such as git.

Be aware that locally, the main script is named as Code.js instead of Code.gs. It will be automatically named as Code.gs when it is uploaded to your Google drive.

Uploading Project

Having tested your code, you can now upload our project to the Google Drive.

gapps upload

Publishing Project

To publish the Google Scripts Add-on projects to the Google Chrome Web Store, you must first have a verified Google Chrome Web Store Console account, without which, you will not be able to publish your project and at present, the website http://script.google.com does not give you much meaningful error messages either.

Therefore, you must first verify your account at Google Chrome Web Store Console site, for which, Google requires you to pay a nominal fee, at  the time this post is written, $5.

Once you meet the above requirement, to publish an add-on, or to update an published add-on. Detail information is in this piece of Google documentation. In the nutshell, at http://script.google.com, choose "Publish", and then select "Publish as Web Add-on".