Sending notification from google spreadsheet using time-driven events with condition - google-apps-script

Question

I would like to receive notifications when domain will expire. So I created a spreadsheet with a list of website and date of expiration. It has also a condition in Column A that when a domain is about to expire in 10 days it will appear Send notification as cell value. You can view my spreadsheet here.
With the values in column A, I would like to receive emails telling that the www.sample.com will expire on --some date here--.
For example, when Column A have new values equal to Send notification, then send email.
What I have tried and encountered:
var cell = sheet.getActiveCell().getA1Notation();
var row = sheet.getActiveRange().getRow();
var cellvalue = sheet.getActiveCell().getValue().toString();
var recipients = "youremail#gmail.com";
var domain = '';
var expirydate= '';
if(cell.indexOf('A')!=-1 && cell.indexOf('A') == 'Send notification'){
domain = sheet.getRange('B'+ sheet.getActiveCell().getRowIndex()).getValue();
expirydate = sheet.getRange('D'+ sheet.getActiveCell().getRowIndex()).getValue()
}
var subject = 'Expiry Notification : '+sheet.getName();
var body = 'Website will expire! ' + domain + ' is about to expire on ' + expirydate;
MailApp.sendEmail(recipients, subject, body);
Logger.log(body);
Trying this script only sends me notification without the value of the cell.
I would like this works even when the spreadsheet is not open / I am offline. So I guess I will be using the time driven event (every week).
Any help is much appreciated!

Answer 1

Prepare yourself, my answers tend to be long and explanatory.
Take this block:
if(cell.indexOf('A')!=-1 && cell.indexOf('A') == 'Send notification'){
domain = sheet.getRange('B'+ sheet.getActiveCell().getRowIndex()).getValue();
expirydate = sheet.getRange('D'+ sheet.getActiveCell().getRowIndex()).getValue()
}
In this block we can see that the if will always return FALSE. That is because cell.indexOf('A') cannot be a string, it will be an integer of the index. You want to be checking the value. I assume that is why you have the cellvalue variable.
Furthermore, your use of getRange() is also off. Why bother with A1 notation if you are getting indexes anyway. Instead I will go over the code and offer a different way of coding this.
Ok, let's start from the top of the code. You mentioned that you want this to run offline. We immediately get a problem here:
var cell = sheet.getActiveCell().getA1Notation();
this will be meaningless once you fire script based on a timer. I would recommend batching your data collection. First to be sure that you are not using getActiveSheet():
var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getSheetByName('Send notification')
OR
var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getSheets()[0]
to get the first sheet or the sheet by it's name. Then we get the entire list into a 2D array.
var vals = sheet.getRange(2, 1, sheet.getLastRow() - 1, sheet.getLastColumn()).getValues()
So we wish to check all domains. So now that we have all the values we wish to loop through them (we assume we left var domain and var expirydate as is)
var i
for (i = 0; i < vals.length; i++) {
if (vals[i][0] == 'Send notification!') {
domain = vals[i][1] //we get the domain name.
expirydate = vals[i][3] //we get the expire date
sendNotification(domain, expirydate); //use a seperate fu
}
}
where in the above block code I would seperate the function
function sendNotification(domain, expirydate) {
var subject = 'Expiry Notification : '+ domain;
var body = 'Website will expire! ' + domain + ' is about to expire on ' + expirydate;
MailApp.sendEmail(recipients, subject, body);
Logger.log(body);
}
of course you can leave the code inside of the for loop, but this will look cleaner. Also, I am not sure you really wanted var subject = 'Expiry Notification : '+sheet.getName(); because that will send all emails with the title Expiry Notification : Send notification because that is the sheet name (the tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet)