I am currently working on a project and I was wondering which datasource is the best for developping a Glide App. The app is similar to a digital menu for a catering service (or a restaurant). In the database there is meals, their descriptions, prices, their type (meat, fish, side dish etc) and relations to a bundle (for exemple in the “Menu Happy Meal” there will be a burger, a portion of french fries, an icecream and a dring). In fact their will be 4 tabs : items (every dish in its own record), food types, bundles and orders.
Should I choose a Google Sheets, or creating an Airtable database is more useful and powerful ? What about Glide Tables ?
The idea is to allow the clients of the catering service to order some dishes directly in the app. I would like to know what is the best way to create a cart system and an order system. If it is possible, I would like to create a public app (no sign-in required) so everything should be working without user profiles.
This should help …
By far one of the best explanations of the Cart concept I have seen on the forum by the great @Jeff_Hager …
I think the App can be copied also so be patient and go through the post and look under the hood. You might have to make some changes and customised it for your use case (Restaurant) but in the main, you should be okay, if you are patient to learn firstly. All the best with your venture…
Maybe the main problem (depending on your skills) with GT is that you won’t be able to use scripts for solve complex cases. Something that Google Sheets have and is our plan C!.
E.g.: delete a group of data at the same time based on time is something almost impossible using GT but with GS, a basic script can do it easily.
What is always try and do is to start off with the Google sheet as the data source and then use glide tables for other tables. For example: For screens that have a lot of user interaction where you source information from the user etc and there will be calculations or some level of synchronisation needed then Glide tables are my go to source but if the screen will be mainly used for display purposes then I don’t really mind using any source. In your case, the screen that shows the restaurant menu is a display screen and there is really no interaction or information sourced from the user therefore it does not really matter which data source you use or prefer.
There is really no blanket solution for your dilemma because each data source has its pros and it’s also got its cons, you just have to decide which one can you live with.
I have not touched on Airtable because I don’t use it at all. I am happy with the Glide tables for now and any limitation in terms of not being able to use scripts, I use webhook through integromat/Make as it is now known. All the best.
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