I just accidentally changed the sheet for a tab, and then when I reopen the app, and change the tab back to the original sheet, I find that all the hardwork of creating the components has gone for a toss. I am little confused about how glideapps really works. Is there no place where the components for a sheet get stored. Really demotivating! Maybe, there should be a page where this is clearly mentioned on what to take care in order to not lose work.
I lost the components on the home sheet, and there was a button which was linked to another sheet and so on. Now, that I lost the button on the home sheet, I recreated it, and linked it to the other sheet. But, when I click on the button, I lose the components on the other sheet as well.
Help!!! This is such a huge loss of work. Is there any workaround to this, or is this how glideapps would work!
I suppose it’s like that because Glide does allow multiple tabs and multiple buttons to point to the same sheet with different layouts and components. I believe any layouts below the top level of a Tab or Link To Screen Button (such as item details in a list) are truly stored and saved by Glide. Also the Style of a page is saved so you can switch between a list and a detail style without losing anything, but that is probably lost when changing the sheet associated with a tab.
I understand your frustration, but I don’t have a solution for you other than to make regular backup copies of your app.
Maybe it would be worth having some sort of lock or prompt that the layout will be lost whenever changing a tab’s sheet or removing a Link to Screen button. Or maybe Glide could do something similar where they save the layout within a style. Maybe they could go deeper and save the style layouts within that selected sheet on that tab.
Sorry I can’t be more help.
Thanks for the info. Glideapps has wonderful components, but basic features such as these can’t be overlooked. Duplicating the apps could be a way of backup, but rather than having user to do this, it can be part of the app itself where versions are created, and user is able to revert to a previous version.
I still cant believe that everything has been lost by just changing the sheet for a tab. Very unreliable, if this is how glideapps works. I may come back to it later, but risks seem very high. Happy I havent gone PRO yet. Would wait till more features makes it robust.
Next time just don’t change the sheet on a tab? I joke
This is something you can undo with Command-z or Control-z, but I think you lose undo history if you leave the editor.
At some point we will add versioning, but it would likely have to revert your spreadsheet as well.
Is there a simple way to understand the architecture of a glide app? Something which when I know I can understand what not to change and what to change. From what I know now, it is like this:
A glideapp is based on a google spread sheet. Each tab is based on a sheet within the google spread sheet. Each sheet has a layout. Each layout consists of components and each component is based on the columns.
If I delete a column, I lose the component.
If I delete a sheet, I lose the layout linked to the sheet and the tab based on the sheet.
Are there other ways of defining this?
Also, some columns/ filters/components are based on relations. Deleting or even altering the relation could potentially delete all three.
I think you pretty much have it. One thing I’d add is that the top level of a Tab or Link to Screen button can have a different layout than the layout that is normally attached to a sheet.
I realize mistakes can happen, but generally once I have put in a lot of work on an app, I don’t touch anything if I don’t have to. I don’t let Glide add components when I make a sheet change. I only change what I need to and I only experiment by duplicating the app or trying things in separate testing app. If I’m experimenting with tabs, I’ll create a new tab to try things out and leave the existing tabs alone, except to move or rename them.
I think some of these things are hard to put into words for everybody to understand when working with Glide for the first time. Some things are maybe best learned the hard way and with time.