Gmail Snooze error: moveSnoozes "service invoked too many times in a short time" - google-apps-script

Question

I trying to find a way to snooze e-mail in my Gmail. Yes, I had Mailbox.app on my iDevice, but I want a way to Snooze or "Laterize" some emails.
I found a Blog Spot post and a Lifehacker one. The Lifehacker article just adds more pictures to the Blog Sport one. I followed the Lifehacker instructions. I made only one deviation from the code. In the two instances that the code says "7", I replaced it with "200".
The code I have is:
var MARK_UNREAD = false;
var ADD_UNSNOOZED_LABEL = false;
function getLabelName(i) {
return "Snooze/Snooze " + i + " days";
}
function setup() {
// Create the labels we’ll need for snoozing
GmailApp.createLabel("Snooze");
for (var i = 1; i <= 200; ++i) {
GmailApp.createLabel(getLabelName(i));
}
if (ADD_UNSNOOZED_LABEL) {
GmailApp.createLabel("Unsnoozed");
}
}
function moveSnoozes() {
var oldLabel, newLabel, page;
for (var i = 1; i <= 200; ++i) {
newLabel = oldLabel;
oldLabel = GmailApp.getUserLabelByName(getLabelName(i));
page = null;
// Get threads in "pages" of 100 at a time
while(!page || page.length == 100) {
page = oldLabel.getThreads(0, 100);
if (page.length > 0) {
if (newLabel) {
// Move the threads into "today’s" label
newLabel.addToThreads(page);
} else {
// Unless it’s time to unsnooze it
GmailApp.moveThreadsToInbox(page);
if (MARK_UNREAD) {
GmailApp.markThreadsUnread(page);
}
if (ADD_UNSNOOZED_LABEL) {
GmailApp.getUserLabelByName("Unsnoozed")
.addToThreads(page);
}
}
// Move the threads out of "yesterday’s" label
oldLabel.removeFromThreads(page);
}
}
}
}
But I'm getting an error:
Your script, Gmail Snooze, has recently failed to finish
successfully. A summary of the failure(s) is shown below.
Details:
Start: 9/10/13 12:16 AM
Function: moveSnoozes
Error Message: Service invoked too many times in a short time: gmail rateMax. Try Utilities.sleep(1000) between calls. (line 24, file "Code")
Trigger: time-based
End: 9/10/13 12:22 AM
Does anybody know how I can make use of Utilities.sleep(1000)? Where do I type that in?

Answer 1

The error you got is because creating 200 labels at the speed-of-code is too fast for Gmail and considered abuse of it's API. SO, as the error message suggests, you could use Utilities.sleep(1000) to wait a second between each label creation.
I'm not familiar with the script (Boomerang works well for me), but you might try making your 30, 60, 90 180 day labels by hand and letting the script pick up on them. Then you don't need to worry about the label creation at all.
In an effort to help you better understand the code you are reading. Below is an explanation of what's going on and how to insert the Utilities.sleep(). You will need to decide for how long you want to wait 1000ms means that you're waiting for 200 seconds, and if you have 3 min to spare that will do just fine. You could experiment to see at what point the Gmail app says 'Woah that's enough there. Take it slower please.'
NOTE: I am not attempting to re-engineer this to allow for a better creation/management of labels. There are a probably a number of enhancements that can be made to the code, and although tempting, they will be left as an exercise for the reader.
RE your pastie:
function setup() {
// This creates 1 label called "Snooze"
// it probably isn't causing the problem
GmailApp.createLabel("Snooze");
// This piece is a loop that will execute 200 times.
// It will do so as fast as GAS will let it.
// This is probably where the problem is...
for (var i = 1; i <= 200; ++i) {
// Create the label
GmailApp.createLabel(getLabelName(i));
// We should wait a bit before making the next one
// Utilities.sleep() will do well to go here
Utilities.sleep(/*Milliseconds to wait*/);
}
// I doubt this is causing the problem either.
// It's only one label creation
if (ADD_UNSNOOZED_LABEL) {
GmailApp.createLabel("Unsnoozed");
}
}