Make AJAX Request to Google Script Web App with jQuery

March 22, 2017

You have published a Google Apps Script as a public web app that returns data as JSON but when you try to make an AJAX call to this web app using jQuery, you get the “Cross Origin” error.

Your AJAX request is blocked by the browser because of the “same origin policy” that disallows reading the remote resource at script.google.com. An easy workaround to this problem is JSONP or JSON with a prefix. With JSONP, the client’s browser won’t enforce the same origin policy but for that to work, you would need to modify your Google Script web app to return results in JSONP format.

Here’s an example web app that return JSONP results.

function doGet(e) {
  var result = '';

  try {
    result = 'Hello ' + e.parameter.name;
  } catch (f) {
    result = 'Error: ' + f.toString();
  }

  result = JSON.stringify({
    result: result,
  });

  return ContentService.createTextOutput(e.parameter.callback + '(' + result + ')').setMimeType(
    ContentService.MimeType.JAVASCRIPT
  );
}

The MimeType of the output is set as JAVASCRIPT and that will return as JSONP. You can now call this web app from your client side JavaScript as shown here.

<script>

  // Make an AJAX call to Google Script
  function callGoogleScript() {

    var url = "https://script.google.com/macros/s/123/exec?callback=ctrlq&name=";
    var name = "Amit Agarwal"

    var request = jQuery.ajax({
      crossDomain: true,
      url: url + encodeURIComponent(name),
      method: "GET",
      dataType: "jsonp"
    });

  }

  // print the returned data
  function ctrlq(e) {
    console.log(e.result)
  }
</script>

Google Apps Script

ShareWhatsAppTwitterFacebook

Amit Agarwal

Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Champion

Amit Agarwal is a Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and Google Apps Script. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science (I.I.T.) and is the first professional blogger in India.

Amit has developed several popular Google add-ons including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Read more on Lifehacker and YourStory