Two scripts running simultaneously in the same spreadsheet disturbs each other?

Question

Script 1:

Scraping data from a website and puts the new collected data into Column A and Column B.

function scraping() {
  var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive().getSheetByName('PageA');
  var url = 'www.linktoscraping.com';

  const contentText = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url).getContentText();
  const $ = Cheerio.load(contentText);
  
    $('path1')
        .each((index, element) => {sheet.getRange(index + 1, 1).setValue($(element).text().trim());});

    $('path2')
        .each((index, element) => {sheet.getRange(index + 1, 2).setValue($(element).text().trim());});
}

Script 2:

Takes the data from Column A and Column B and puts it in another spreadsheet:

function register() {
  var SheetA = SpreadsheetApp.openById('AAAAAAA').getSheetByName('PageA');
  var data = SheetA.getRange('A1:B').getValues();
  var SheetB = SpreadsheetApp.openById('BBBBBBB').getSheetByName('History');
  SheetB.getRange(1,1, data.length, data[0].length).setValues(data);
}

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Both scripts with a trigger activated so that they run every 1 minute.

If both scripts happen to run at the same time, can one of them cause an error in the other's running or can they work simultaneously without problems?

Answer 1

The scripts shown are very prone to have problems.

The first one has the problem of writing to one cell at a time which is discouraged in https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/support/best-practices and since this is set to run every minute, and assuming that you are using a free account, it's very likely that this script will consume all triggers total runtime quota.

Regarding the second script, there is no way to be sure what version of the source spreadsheet will be read, it's prone to throw errors and will cause the all triggers total runtime quota be consumed faster.

I think that the best bet is to use a single trigger that uses batchUpdate (requires the use Advanced Sheets Service) to write the scraped data with a single call to both spreadsheets.

Resources

• https://developers.google.com/sheets/api/reference/rest/v4/spreadsheets/request#UpdateCellsRequest

Answer 2

To make sure that Script1() and Script2() run in the correct order, remove your current triggers, and add this function:

function scriptRunner() {
  Script1();
  Script2();
}

Then install a time-driven trigger that runs scriptRunner().

A one-minute timer may run too frequently. You may want to set the trigger to run once every 15 minutes or so.