I’ve come up with a scenario and it feels slightly cumbersome, let me me know if anyone can suggest something here.
I want the user to select from a list OR click Other which will populated in the table
However I have to create to inputs a drop down selection and a Suggestion field for other?
Is this the correct approach?
Couple of questions:
Thanks @Darren_Murphy
See answers inline below:
Something else to mention, is that I’m not using sheets, but Glide Tables. As I was looking at the Column Array options
Okay, this is quite tricky. And I’m not sure that can give you a good solution right now. I’ll need to think about it a bit.
But let me try and explain the challenges.
First thing - whenever you’re using multi-select it’s always best practice to write the values as RowIDs. This is because a multi-select will result in a comma-separated list, and you can never be certain that your item descriptions won’t contain commas. And this is especially true if you’re accepting values entered by users and adding them to the list.
So ideally, you would have your first choice component configured to use RowID’s for the Values, and your location descriptions as the Display As. This way, you be certain that stuff will never be broken by a rogue comma, and you can also safely change your location descriptions without fear of breaking existing relations.
So, if we are to follow my above advice, then…
This is a challenge, because we don’t yet have a RowID for the suggested item. So the only option would be add the text as entered. But then as well as running the risk that the user might include a comma, we’ll also have plain text intermingled with RowIDs in a single joined list. And that will present its own new set of challenges.
This is not too bad. We could simply add it to the list with the Submit action, and Glide will generate a RowID for it, ready for next time. But we’d still have the problem that we’re saving this as plain text, so it won’t be compatible with the RowIDs that we’d normally save.
Anyway, I hope that’s explained the challenges, and as I say I don’t have a good option off the top of my head. We could probably use a bit of funky if-then-else logic to deal with the plain text/RowID incompatibility, but I’ll need to give that some thought.
In the meantime, quite possibly somebody else will see a simple option that I’ve overlooked.
@Gary_Willmott - another question. What is the end goal here? And what I mean is, what will happen with the users choices and how will they be used?
My family is in town and I created an app so everyone can have an overview of our schedule (a calendar view of what I called “slots”), a list of possible activities (which I called “activities”), etc. Note that slots and activities are two different tables: a slot is an entry in a calendar/agenda, an activity is something to do but does not include any information as to when the activity might happen (if at all).
When adding a slot in the form screen, the user can select from a list of predefined activities or add his own description of the slot, though this will not add an activity to the activities table. The situation is similar to yours I feel.
It’s good enough for my use case. Below is how I displayed the components in the builder. There are other components in the form, in particular start and end date-times to define the slot. This screenshot though seems related to your use case.
Working backwards, users will be able to filter the gallery by surfers that are tagged essesntially
This is critical as they want to see photos of themselves or friends and not just random people.
I’m not sure I follow. In your first screen shot, it looks like the user is being asked to select/tag locations - not surfers?
Sorry I got mixed up as I’m using a similar scenario for surfers, as they want to filter by location and by surfer, see below
b
ie. Each Gallery post must have a location / surfer tagged with it.
Ah, I see.
So the context is that this selection is made when a user is uploading a photo, and so they are tagging the location where the photo was taken, yes?
Correct, you can see it here
It’s the “Apply to be a Photographer” form, yes?
That explains the multi-select, I think. So when I submit the form, are those locations tagged to me as a user (rather than tagged to a photo)? They must be, I guess, because I don’t see anywhere in that form to upload an image.
Do these then become the Locations that I am “following”, or?
Apologies for bombarding you with questions, I’m just trying to get a clear picture in my mind.
No it’s the “upload footage” button in the top nav
I’ve approved you, so you will see it now.
hehe, we seem to have switched mid stream. Your original screen shot had a list of locations, not surfers.
But I guess it’s a similar use case in both. In one case, you’re tagging one or more locations to a photographer (I think?), and in the other you’re tagging one or more surfers to a photograph.
Alright, everything I said in my earlier reply still holds in terms of the challenges. But I have a clearer picture now. Let me think on this a bit.
Yeh correct, they are both very similar use cases:
I’ve given a breakdown to give more context
Gallery Item:
Surfer
Locations:
Hey @Darren_Murphy what you think so far?
Do you think the Trebuchet method would work in this scenario?
Yes, I definitely think you need to be using Trebuchet or some variation of it.
But I’m still not sure about the best way to handle the mix of current values and a new (optional) value being added in the same step. I’m thinking that you probably need to be creating a row for the optional value, and then using the generated RowID in the same action sequence to update the joined list. But I’m not really sure if that would work, or how reliable it would be if it did work. I’d need to experiment with it.
Is there any chance I can get access to a copy of your app to experiment with?
Hey @Darren_Murphy , yeh happy to give you a copy, how do I give it to you?
Probably the easiest is to send me your team invite link (send it to me privately).
You can get it from your Team Members page
Thanks, sent
