Google Apps Script - Calendar Reservation - Fails to Create Event

Question

I have pasted the code below. To explain what the code is intended to do is block out a conference room so that it can not be reserved for use, it is a small "huddle room" that will be blocked out and only available to reserve a week in advance.

Anyway here is the problem I am encountering with the code below. If I run the code starting from Jan 1. The code will run and then part way through March stops creating events, if this happens exactly at the beginning of a month it wouldn't be an issue as I could either start easily from that point again, or assume the month is spelled wrong. But it creates reservations though march 18th. Also when I restarted this and set it to create blocked reservations starting at the beginning of April it got though December 8th.

My first guess is that I need to deal with reformatting the code to handle months without 31 days, but I assumed that those none existent days would just throw an error and the lop would continue, and it did get through February which is a short month.

Just thinking maybe someone who has more experience with Google Scripting may have an idea or see a flaw in something I am doing. Thanks for any help

function blockReservations(){
  var roomcalendar = CalendarApp.getCalendarById('company.com_12458546525839392d898932@resource.calendar.google.com');
  //for(var z=2014;z<=2020;z++){
  //var year = z;  
  var year = '2014';  //This Line May be used in place of the above for loop to specify a specific year
  for(var x=4;x<=12;x++)
  {
    if(x==1) var month = 'January';
    else if(x==2) var month = 'February';
    else if(x==3) var month = 'March';
    else if(x==4) var month = 'April';
    else if(x==5) var month = 'May';
    else if(x==6) var month = 'June';
    else if(x==7) var month = 'July';
    else if(x==8) var month = 'August';
    else if(x==9) var month = 'September';
    else if(x==10) var month = 'October';
    else if(x==11) var month = 'November';
    else if(x==12) var month = 'December';
    else month = 'null';
    //var month = 'July';  //This Line May be used in place of the above for loop to specify a specific year

    for(var y=1;y<=31;y++)
    {
      var date = y;
      var startDateString = month + ' ' + date + ', ' + year +' 00:00:00';
      var endDateString = month + ' ' + date + ', ' + year +' 24:00:00';
      var event = roomcalendar.createEvent('Time Blocked', new Date(startDateString), new Date(endDateString));
    }
   }
// }
}

Answer 1

You don't mention any error messages, but I would expect that you're receiving a notification email reporting that the script was killed for running too long. Creating events in a loop can take lots of processing time.

I propose a different approach. Instead of creating daily events to reserve the room, why not create a recurring all-day event, starting a number of days in the future. Then each day, this reservation can be updated (by a timed trigger function) to revise the recurrence rule to start one day later.

/**
 * Create or update a block reservation for a conference room,
 * starting 'blockFrom' days from today.
 */
function updateBlockReservation() {
  // Get Calendar
  var calName = 'Huddle Room';
  var cal = CalendarApp.getCalendarsByName(calName)[0];

  var title = 'Reserved';  // Reserved events will have this title
  var blockFrom = 7;       // Days from now until room is blocked
  var today = new Date();  // Today's date, ...
  today.setHours(0,0,0,0); // at midnight.
  var startDate            // Daily block reservation starts here
        = new Date(today.getTime() + (blockFrom * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000));
  var endTime = new Date(startDate.getTime() + (24 * 60 * 60 * 1000) - 1);
  var recurrence = CalendarApp.newRecurrence().addDailyRule();

  // Look for existing block reservation
  var series = cal.getEvents(startDate, endTime, {search:title});

  if (series.length == 0) {
    // No block reservation found - create one.
    var reserved = cal.createAllDayEventSeries(title, startDate, recurrence);
  }
  else {
    // Block reservation exists - update the recurrence to start later.
    reserved = series[0].getEventSeries();
    reserved.setRecurrence(recurrence, startDate);
  }

  debugger;  // Pause if running in debugger
}