Google form that turns on and off each day automatically - forms

Question

I love Google Forms I can play with them for hours. I have spent days trying to solve this one, searching for an answer. It is very much over my head. I have seen similar questions but none that seemed to have helped me get to an answer. We have a café where I work and I created a pre-order form on Google Forms. That was the easy part. The Café can only accept pre-orders up to 10:30am. I want the form to open at 7am and close at 10:30am everyday to stop people pre ordering when the café isn't able to deal with their order. I used the very helpful tutorial from http://labnol.org/?p=20707 to start me off I have added and messed it up and managed to get back to the below which is currently how it looks. It doesn't work and I can't get my head around it. At one point I managed to turn it off but I couldn't turn it back on!! I'm finding it very frustrating and any help in solving this would be amazing. To me it seems very simple as it just needs to turn on and off at a certain time every day. I don't know! Please help me someone?
FORM_OPEN_DATE = "7:00";
FORM_CLOSE_DATE = "10:30";
RESPONSE_COUNT = "";
/* Initialize the form, setup time based triggers */
function Initialize() {
deleteTriggers_();
if ((FORM_OPEN_DATE !== "7:00") &&
((new Date()).getTime("7:00") < parseDate_(FORM_OPEN_DATE).getTime ("7:00"))) {
closeForm("10:30");
ScriptApp.newTrigger("openForm")
.timeBased("7:00")
.at(parseDate_(FORM_OPEN_DATE))
.create(); }
if (FORM_CLOSE_DATE !== "10:30") {
ScriptApp.newTrigger("closeForm")
.timeBased("10:30")
.at(parseDate_(FORM_CLOSE_DATE))
.create(); }
if (RESPONSE_COUNT !== "") {
ScriptApp.newTrigger("checkLimit")
.forForm(FormApp.getActiveForm())
.onFormSubmit()
.create(); } }
/* Delete all existing Script Triggers */
function deleteTriggers_() {
var triggers = ScriptApp.getProjectTriggers();
for (var i in triggers) {
ScriptApp.deleteTrigger(triggers[i]);
}
}
/* Allow Google Form to Accept Responses */
function openForm() {
var form = FormApp.getActiveForm();
form.setAcceptingResponses(true);
informUser_("Your Google Form is now accepting responses");
}
/* Close the Google Form, Stop Accepting Reponses */
function closeForm() {
var form = FormApp.getActiveForm();
form.setAcceptingResponses(false);
deleteTriggers_();
informUser_("Your Google Form is no longer accepting responses");
}
/* If Total # of Form Responses >= Limit, Close Form */
function checkLimit() {
if (FormApp.getActiveForm().getResponses().length >= RESPONSE_COUNT ) {
closeForm();
}
}
/* Parse the Date for creating Time-Based Triggers */
function parseDate_(d) {
return new Date(d.substr(0,4), d.substr(5,2)-1,
d.substr(8,2), d.substr(11,2), d.substr(14,2));
}

Answer 1

I don't think you can use .timebased('7:00'); And it is good to check that you don't have a trigger before you try creating a new one so I like to do this. You can only specify that you want a trigger at a certain hour like say 7. The trigger will be randomly selected somewhere between 7 and 8. So you really can't pick 10:30 either. It has to be either 10 or 11. If you want more precision you may have to trigger your daily triggers early and then count some 5 minute triggers to get you closer to the mark. You'll have to wait to see where the daily triggers are placed in the hour first. Once they're set they don't change.
I've actually played around with the daily timers in a log by creating new ones until I get one that close enough to my desired time and then I turn the others off and keep that one. You have to be patient. As long as you id the trigger by the function name in the log you can change the function and keep the timer going.
Oh and I generally created the log file with drive notepad and then open it up whenever I want to view the log.
function formsOnOff()
{
if(!isTrigger('openForm'))
{
ScriptApp.newTrigger('openForm').timeBased().atHour(7).create()
}
if(!isTrigger('closeForm'))
{
ScriptApp.newTrigger('closeForm').timeBased().atHour(11)
}
}
function isTrigger(funcName)
{
var r=false;
if(funcName)
{
var allTriggers=ScriptApp.getProjectTriggers();
var allHandlers=[];
for(var i=0;i<allTriggers.length;i++)
{
allHandlers.push(allTriggers[i].getHandlerFunction());
}
if(allHandlers.indexOf(funcName)>-1)
{
r=true;
}
}
return r;
}
I sometimes run a log entry on my timers so that I can figure out exactly when they're happening.
function logEntry(entry,file)
{
var file = (typeof(file) != 'undefined')?file:'eventlog.txt';
var entry = (typeof(entry) != 'undefined')?entry:'No entry string provided.';
if(entry)
{
var ts = Utilities.formatDate(new Date(), "GMT-6", "yyyy-MM-dd' 'hh:mm:ss a");
var s = ts + ' - ' + entry + '\n';
myUtilities.saveFile(s, file, true);//this is part of a library that I created. But any save file function will do as long as your appending.
}
}
This is my utilities save file function. You have to provide defaultfilename and datafolderid.
function saveFile(datstr,filename,append)
{
var append = (typeof(append) !== 'undefined')? append : false;
var filename = (typeof(filename) !== 'undefined')? filename : DefaultFileName;
var datstr = (typeof(datstr) !== 'undefined')? datstr : '';
var folderID = (typeof(folderID) !== 'undefined')? folderID : DataFolderID;
var fldr = DriveApp.getFolderById(folderID);
var file = fldr.getFilesByName(filename);
var targetFound = false;
while(file.hasNext())
{
var fi = file.next();
var target = fi.getName();
if(target == filename)
{
if(append)
{
datstr = fi.getBlob().getDataAsString() + datstr;
}
targetFound = true;
fi.setContent(datstr);
}
}
if(!targetFound)
{
var create = fldr.createFile(filename, datstr);
if(create)
{
targetFound = true;
}
}
return targetFound;
}