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Comment by kjhughes | Hacker News Reader

The link title will attract developers anxious to see what Google is offering or Googlers are using to edit code, but this is just an online editor designed for Apps Script editing. It's been around a long time and is less interesting than the link-bait title suggests.

Google Apps Script is very useful in conjunction with Google's online apps and their rich libraries. JavaScript makes for a good customization language.

One non-obvious irritation, however, is that scripts cannot be shared. So, for example, one has to duplicate code between multiple spreadsheets rather than being able to import it as one would expect. There's an issue open, but even with a high priority, it's two years old:

http://code.google.com/p/google-apps-script-issues/issues/de...

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That model does work reasonably well for use cases like roleplaying game character sheets, where individual players may want to tweak the scripts for their specific character.

It is incredibly useful in general, but definitely not news.

I have a financial spreadsheet that I use to track the distribution of my portfolio. I follow a system where I have a target allocation for each of a small number of assets, and then I buy or sell shares when any given asset gets beyond a certain tolerance of its target allocation.

Using Google Spreadsheets and the Google finance API available with Google Apps script, I was able to automate every part of this except syncing it with my account (since there's no API to access my financial records.) All I have to do is click a button, and the cells change color based on whether I should buy, sell or hold.

I'd be really interested to see how your set-up works. Would it be possible for you to share your files/code and a short description of how you implemented your set-up? I am happy for you to remove/sanitize sensitive details relating to your portfolio. However, I would love to understand how I can develop a solution like this for myself.

Thank you for your help.

What I have is a sheet which says how many of each asset I own, and the desired allocation. Then, there is a cell that calculates the current allocation, based on the number of shares, and the current price of the share.

The current price of the share is fetched from another sheet using a vlookup. That sheet is populated by the script. The script is here! https://gist.github.com/2717042

The overall system is based on research I found here: http://seekingalpha.com/article/15134-the-seeking-alpha-etf-...

What part did you use the scripting engine for? I was able to do something very similar, but purely with spreadsheet rules.

The scripting engine fetches up-to-date stock quotes and fills them in. The rest is all done using spreadsheet rules.

Here is the scripting engine part: https://gist.github.com/2717042

> I was able to automate every part of this except syncing it with my account (since there's no API to access my financial records.)

It's actually possible to simulate a browsing session and have the App Script log in to your broker's site and scrape the data you need. Here is some prototyping code: https://gist.github.com/aaf74e50b9a281396722

Update (2012-05-22): Google Apps Scripts now supports libraries:

http://googleappsdeveloper.blogspot.com/2012/05/introducing-...

Yay!

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