As of 2021, with V8 engine, I'm wondering if it's a good idea to use Global Variables in Google Apps Script? And if it is, how to use them? Is my way a good way (described below)?
Now I checked, of course, all other similar questions. But there are still some details I couldn't find:
Basically what I tried to do is to not repeat the code: I have multiple functions, and I'm storing the active spreadsheet and the current sheet like so:
const ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
const sheet = ss.getActiveSheet();
- repeating (1)
- wasting resources - instantiating spreadsheet and sheet (2)
- Increasing variables names inconsistency (ss / spreadsheet / spreadSheet - when copy/pasting from a snippet on the web) (3)
Right?
So I thought of using the Global Variables (GV) whenever I have common local variables in multiple functions.
However, since they’re will be unnecessarily allocated on every function call (there are also other functions that don't need the GVs), I tried to define them only when needed (only when there's function call that uses them) - by not using a defining keyword (var, const, let):
According to this link, it seems to be a good approach (pattern 1).
Anyway, I'm wondering if there are any other considerations or downsides I'm not aware of? Is it really a good idea to go this road? Because so far, I didn’t see any snippet that implements this, and I saw a lot of GAS snippets.
One downside I'm aware of is the lack of autocompletion in the new GAS editor, for my GVs (since I didn't define them using 'var' or 'let' to set their scope Global on purpose).
Otherwise, I'm aware of PropertiesService and CacheService. However I'm willing to reuse my script (where I defined my GVs) as a library for my other scripts.
Plus, you can only store values as strings in PropertiesService and CacheService (and not SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet()) right? Not to mention that I don't need persistency after the script execution.
So I'm also hesitant to use them instead of GVs.