One of things that makes Apps Script great is its ability to act as a hub for various types of Google data. In addition to our built-in services for popular products such as Gmail, Drive, Docs, and Calendar, we also provide a line of advanced Google services that let you use existing Google APIs such as Analytics and Tasks. Today, we're expanding that family of advanced services to include the following:

• Admin SDK Directory service
• Admin SDK Reports service
• Fusion Tables service
• Google+ Domains service
• Mirror service
• YouTube service
• YouTube Analytics service

From Google Apps administrators and data-heads to Glass Explorers and YouTube content creators, this collection of new services has something for everyone. Getting started with advanced services is easy, since we take cake of the authorization for you and even provide autocomplete in the script editor.

While our built-in services are hand-crafted for ease-of-use, our advanced services are automatically generated from existing public Google APIs. They provide access to the full power of the underlying API but can be slightly more difficult to use. Let's look at some sample code that searches for YouTube videos with the keyword "dogs".

function searchByKeyword() {
  var part = 'id,snippet';
  var optionalArgs = {
    q: 'dogs',
    maxResults: 25
  };

  var results = YouTube.Search.list(part, optionalArgs);

  for (var i = 0; i < results.items.length; i++) {
    var item = results.items[i];
    Logger.log('[%s] Title: %s', item.id.videoId, item.snippet.title);
  }
}

This function uses the YouTube.Search.list() method, which has a required parameter part and optional parameters q and maxResults, among others. Required parameters are passed individually as method arguments, while optional parameters are passed as one key-value map. The full list of parameters this method accepts can be found in the YouTube API's reference documentation.

We're also changing our advanced services to behave more like vanilla JavaScript, so that it's easier to reference the APIs' existing documentation. You can now pass native JavaScript objects into these services' methods, and access the results using regular dot-notation. Below is some sample code that adds a new user to a Google Apps domain.

function addUser() {
  var user = {
    primaryEmail: '[email protected]',
    name: {
      givenName: 'Elizabeth',
      familyName: 'Smith'
    },
    // Generate a random password string.
    password: Math.random().toString(36)
  };
  user = AdminDirectory.Users.insert(user);
  Logger.log('User %s created with ID %s.', user.primaryEmail, user.id);
}

Notice that the user resource is constructed as a plain object literal, and the ID of the created user is accessed via dot-notation. The legacy getter/setter notation will continue to work but will no longer appear in autocomplete.

Finally, it's worth reminding that advanced Google services must be enabled in each script that uses them. This involves toggling them on once in the script editor under Resources > Advanced Google services and again in the associated Google Developers Console project.

Eric Koleda profile Eric is a Developer Programs Engineer based in NYC on the Google Apps Script team. He's previously worked with the AdWords API and enterprise content management software.

Apps Script started out as a simple tool to let developers add new features to Google Apps, but it’s grown into a programming platform that thousands of professional coders use every day. We hear a couple common requests from developers when they’re building complex projects with Apps Script: they want a full-featured IDE, and they want to sync to external version-control systems like GitHub.

Today, we’re introducing support for Apps Script in the Google Plugin for Eclipse. You can now sync with your existing Apps Script files on Google Drive, edit them in Eclipse — offline, if necessary, and with all the benefits of autocomplete — then write your code back to Drive so you can run it in the cloud. Because the plugin stores a copy of each script in a local workspace, you can manage Apps Script projects with your favorite version-control system.

Getting started is easy:

1. Install Eclipse, if you don’t already use it. If you already have Eclipse, make sure it’s at least version 3.7 (Indigo) for either Java or Java EE.
2. In Eclipse, select Help > Eclipse Marketplace, then install the Google Plugin for Eclipse (or see our Getting Started guide for alternate installation instructions).
3. Click Sign in to Google in the bottom-right corner of Eclipse, then enter your username and password.
4. Select File > Import to transfer your projects into Eclipse. Whenever you’re online, the plugin will automatically sync your local edits with Google Drive.

For step-by-step instructions on installation and use, see the documentation on using Apps Script with the Google Plugin for Eclipse.

Just in case you were wondering, the plugin uses the public Google Drive SDK to sync Apps Script files between your local file system and Google’s servers. We’ve previously covered the techniques it uses in our documentation on importing and exporting projects and the recent episode of Apps Script Crash Course on Google Developers Live below.

Norman Cohen   profile Norman Cohen is a software engineer based in Google’s New York office. He works primarily on the Google Plugin for Eclipse, focusing on improving developer experience in the cloud.

Last month, we announced several new ways to customize Google Forms. As of this week, three of those options are also available in forms created from Apps Script — embedding YouTube videos, displaying a progress bar, and showing a custom message if a form isn’t accepting responses.

Adding a YouTube video is as simple as any other Google Forms operation in Apps Script — from the Form object, just call addVideoItem(), then setVideoUrl(youtubeUrl). Naturally, you can also control the video’s size, alignment, and so forth.

To show a progress bar, call setProgressBar(enabled). Don’t even need a second sentence to explain that one. The custom message for a form that isn’t accepting responses is similarly easy: setCustomClosedFormMessage(message), and you’re done.

Want to give it a try yourself? Copy and paste the sample code below into the script editor at script.google.com, then hit Run. When the script finishes, click View > Logs to grab the URL for your new form, or look for it in Google Drive.

function showNewFormsFeatures() {
  var form = FormApp.create('New Features in Google Forms');
  var url = form.getPublishedUrl();
  
  form.addVideoItem()
    .setVideoUrl('http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38H7WpsTD0M');
  
  form.addMultipleChoiceItem()
    .setTitle('Look, a YouTube video! Is that cool, or what?')
    .setChoiceValues(['Cool', 'What']);

  form.addPageBreakItem();
  
  form.addCheckboxItem()
    .setTitle('Progress bars are silly on one-page forms.')
    .setChoiceValues(['Ah, that explains why the form has two pages.']);
  
  form.setProgressBar(true);

  form.setCustomClosedFormMessage('Too late — this form is closed. Sorry!');
  // form.setAcceptingResponses(false); // Uncomment to see custom message.

  Logger.log('Open this URL to see the form: %s', url);
}

Dan Lazin   profile | twitter Dan is a technical writer on the Developer Relations team for Google Apps Script. Before joining Google, he worked as video-game designer and newspaper reporter. He has bicycled through 17 countries.