converting nonadjacent columns to proper/title case in Google Sheets - google-apps-script

Question

I found something online and it works for changing text to title case; however, it only works on adjacent columns and I need to apply this to multiple nonadjacent columns. I will paste in the script. If you can give a fix to being able to take care of letting the script run on multiple nonadjacent columns that I specify, that would be great. I found some stuff online that says it can do that, but it is not clear to me.
Here is the script that works:
function onEdit() {
var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
var sheet = ss.getSheets()[0];
var range = sheet.getRange("A_range");
range.activate();
var values = range.getValues();
if (values.map) {
range.setValues(values.map(function(row) {
return row.map(titleCase);
}));
}
else {
range.setValue(titleCase(values));
}
}
function titleCase(str) {
return str.toString().split(/\b/).map(function(word) {
return word ? word.charAt(0).toUpperCase() + word.slice(1).toLowerCase() : '';
}).join('');
}
This was from other people on this concept:
The stuff to make it run on other columns is this:
var range1=sheet.getRange("A1:A19").getValues();
var range2=sheet.getRange("C1:C19").getValues();
var range=[],i=-1;
while ( range1[++i] ) {
range.push( [ range1[i][0], range2[i][0] ] );
}
where range will have content from both columns.
data = sheet.getRange("A1:C19").getValues();
for (i = 0; i < data[0].length; i++) {
// do something with data[0][i]
// do something with data[2][i]
}
I am not sure how to implement these 2 other ideas listed above. If you could be really specific, like actually put something into the first script that lets it run on Col. A and Col. D,for example, it would be much better than generalities, as I am really really new to this and have spent an enormous amount of time trying to learn it/get a handle on it. Thanks!

Answer 1

Because making as few calls as possible to the SpreadsheetApp API is better for speed, i'd prefer to simply take a Range of all the cells between the first and the last column, apply the transformation to selected columns and then write the whole lot back again. The only place to edit then if the columns change is a single pattern array.
var columnPattern = [1,5,6,7] // Equivalent to [A,E,F,G]
The script then runs a simple map over the two-dimensional array representing the sheet.
function transform() {
var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
var sheet = ss.getSheets()[0];
// Rows (Could be first row and last row, OP isn't clear.
var startRow = 1, endRow = sheet.getLastRow();
// An array with Column indexes for those you want in Title Case.
var columnPattern = [1,5,6,7];
var firstColumn = parseInt(columnPattern.slice(0,1));
var lastColumn = parseInt(columnPattern.slice(-1));
// The whole range
var range = sheet.getRange(startRow,
firstColumn,
endRow,
lastColumn - firstColumn)
// Apply Title Case to selected columns.
var data = range.getValues().map(function(row, i, rows) {
row = row.map(function(col, j, row) {
if(columnPattern.indexOf(j + firstColumn) >= 0) {
col = titleCase(col);
}
return col;
});
return row;
});
range.setValues(data);
}
The only point I'd perhaps clarify is the line where it identifies the columns to amend.
if(columnPattern.indexOf(j + firstColumn) >= 0) {
This just corrects for the columnPattern array not being the same dimension as your sheet. An alternative would be to have an array that did match the x-dimension with boolean values, but this would be less adaptable to your sheet changing size.
I'd resist putting this in an onEdit() function but it depends on your use case as to how often data changed.