Google App Script add new list items when replacing text in Docs

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I've created a script which, when a form is submitted, is triggered to create a document and replace several tags with the information from the answers.

As part of this, I create a variable which stores several answers with line breaks between them, e.g.:

if (marketingConditions.includes("Option 1")) {
  marketingConditionsReplacement = marketingConditionsReplacement + '\n' + "List item 1";
}
if (marketingConditions.includes("Option 2")) {
  marketingConditionsReplacement = marketingConditionsReplacement + '\n' + "List item 2";
}
if (marketingConditions.includes("Option 3")) {
  marketingConditionsReplacement = marketingConditionsReplacement + '\n' + " List item 3";
}

I then have a bullet point in my document which has a reference and is replaced with:

body.replaceText("{{MarketingConditions}}", marketingConditionsReplacement);

However, the new line (as expected) does not append each of these string elements as new list items.

I want it to create this

  • List item 1
  • List item 2
  • List item 3

if all of the conditions are true, for example.

I'm wondering if it's better to do this with an array instead, where each of them is appended as a separate item, but I'm not sure how I could use 'appendListItem' with this.

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated as I'm very new to App Scripts!

google-apps-script google-docs
1 Answers

I'd prefer to use an array indeed.

Suppose you have the doc template like this:

enter image description here

You can replace the list by elements of your array this way:

function main() {
  var list_items = ['List item 1', 'List item 2', 'List item 3']; // the array
  
  var body = DocumentApp.getActiveDocument().getBody();

  var list = body.getListItems()[0];      // get the template list
  var atts = list.getAttributes();        // get the list attributes
  var indent = list.getIndentFirstLine(); // get the list indent

  list.setText(list_items[0]);            // replace 1st line of the list
  
  var index = body.getChildIndex(list);   // get number of paragraph that contains the list


  // append elements of the array to the list

  for (var i=1; i<list_items.length; i++) {
    var new_list_item = body.insertListItem(index+i, list_items[i]);
    new_list_item.setAttributes(atts);
    new_list_item.setIndentFirstLine(indent);
  }
}

Output will look like this:

enter image description here

References:

https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/document/list-item

https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/document/glyph-type

user_142654690
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