Google Apps Script Attendance Log Application

Here's another quick project that utilizes simple scripts. We are going to create a simple attendance logger application written in Google Apps Script. It's a cool project you can replicate instead of just using a conventional Google Form. Although, in this demo, you could say a Google Form is the better approach. But, just want you to know the basic steps in creating a function web application that uses Google Sheet as a database.

I've posted an article before, with basically, same approach. That was more of pulling from a database. Now we are going to do writing to a database. This is going to be interesting, since after this you both have the read and write flow with Google Sheet as a database. Also, if you need to learn Google Apps Script further, click Buy Now button below for the book. Available in Amazon.

Now, into the script First, let's picture out the overall process. It has two components;

1. The form - this is a web application. The HTML code and the apps script that will handle the interface between HTML and Google Sheets. With the interface, I'm introducing an alert if the log function was successful or not. You will see below script a google.script.run function for handling this interface. Plain HTML javascript cannot communicate with Google Apps Script. In other words we cannot log to Google sheets directly. Unless we are using an API. That is of another discussion. You will see also, that I've separated the javascript component. I'm introducing it this so you could see before hand the advantage in doing it this way. Instead of writing it together with the HTML file. The good thing about this approach, is that, you can modularize your code. Very helpful when your code grows. It's not so good with comes to debugging if it's integrated directly with the HTML component.
2. The Database - this is the Google Sheet where we log the attendance. No need to discuss further on this aspect. But, point to note though, when you pass a date time format from javascript to app script needs attention. You need some data type conversion before you write them into the database.

The Script: