How to run script if a google sheets cell contains email? - email

Question

I'm looking for help to send an email whenever a new row is added by a google form entry if said entry contains an email in the Email column. I'm new to Javascript, but I've pieced together some code which I plan to run off an onEdit trigger in GSheets.
My problem is that if there is no email address, the code will fail. I need to know how to wrap this in an "if/else" or maybe just a simple error handling bit would be fine, not sure.
If I go with an "if/else", I'll need to check if the email column contains a value. I don't need to check if it is a valid email; the google form already does this on submission.
Here is the code I have right now:
function MessageNotification() {
var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
ss.setActiveSheet(ss.getSheetByName("Message Board"));
//
//extracts the values in last row and stores them into a two-dimensional
array called data
var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
var lastRow = sheet.getLastRow();
var dataRange = sheet.getRange(lastRow,3,1,8);
var data = dataRange.getValues();
//
//pull column elements into a one-dimensional array called rowData
for (i in data) {
var rowData = data[i];
var emailAddress = rowData[2];
var poster = rowData[7];
var subject = rowData[3];
var recipName = rowData[6];
var comment = rowData[4];
var replyLink = rowData[5];
//
//
var message = 'Dear ' + recipName + ',\n\n'+poster+' has posted the
following comment directed to you: '+'\n'+comment+'\n\n'+'To reply to this
comment click: '+replyLink;
var subject = subject;
MailApp.sendEmail(emailAddress, subject, message);
}
}
thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

Answer 1

Thank you tehhowch for the help. I'm new at this so I'll have to continue researching the link you referred to regarding iteration best practice. However I was able to get this working with a simple 'if' wrapper, which turned out to be simpler than I thought.
I did find out that form submission does not recognize an active sheet, so manually testing my code worked, while form submission did not trigger it.
After some looking, I replaced:
var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
with this:
var ssID = '//insert spreadsheet id here';
var ss = SpreadsheetApp.openById(ssID);
This still did not work, so I had to kickstart it by deleting the trigger and putting it back in (found this info: On form submit trigger not working)
This may not be the most efficient code, but here is what I have now, and it does work:
function MessageNotification() {
var ssID = '//insert spreadsheet id here';
var ss = SpreadsheetApp.openById(ssID);
ss.setActiveSheet(ss.getSheetByName("Message Board"));
//extracts the values in last row and stores them into a two-dimensional
array called data
var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
var lastRow = sheet.getLastRow();
var dataRange = sheet.getRange(lastRow,3,1,8);
var data = dataRange.getValues();
//
//pull column elements into a one-dimensional array called rowData
for (i in data) {
var rowData = data[i];
var emailAddress = rowData[2];
var poster = rowData[7];
var subject = rowData[3];
var recipName = rowData[6];
var comment = rowData[4];
var replyLink = rowData[5];
//
//
var message = 'Dear ' + recipName + ',\n\n'+poster+' has posted the
following comment directed to you: '+'\n'+comment+'\n\n'+'To reply to this
comment click: '+replyLink;
var subject = subject;
if(emailAddress)
{
MailApp.sendEmail(emailAddress, subject, message);}
}
}

Answer 2

As mentioned in the question comments, you want to use the event object available to the on form submit trigger. This can be accessed from a container-bound script on either the form or its responses spreadsheet, simply by adding a parameter to the function that receives the trigger.
This object is of the form:
e: {
authMode: <enum>,
namedValues: {
'q1title': [ <q1string> ],
'q2title': [ <q2string> ],
...
},
range: <Range>,
triggerUid: <string>,
values: [<q1string>, <q2string>, ...]
}
Using this object means that accessing of the Spreadsheet, for the purposes of emailing someone based on contents of the form, is unnecessary.
function MessageNotification(e) {
if(!e) return; // No form event object was provided.
var responses = e.namedValues;
var emailQTitle = /* the title of the question that asks for the email */;
// Check that 1) this question exists in the response object, and also
// 2) it has an answer with a value that 3) is "truthy".
// https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Truthy
if(responses[emailQTitle] // 1
&& responses[emailQTitle].length // 2
&& responses[emailQTitle][0]) // 3
{
var emailAddress = responses[emailQTitle][0];
/* access the responses variable in a similar manner
for the other variables needed to construct the email */
MailApp.sendEmail(emailAddress, ... );
} else {
/* There was no response to the email question. */
// You can use View->Stackdriver Logging to inspect the form response, for
// example, to make sure that it had the format or values you expected.
console.log({form_object: e, responses: responses, emailTitle: emailQTitle});
}
}