Login workarounds?

Hey all,
I made an app that shows user-submitted content. any user can view content and add their own but the majority of UGC apps are viewers and only a portion contributes content.

for user contributions and for ‘favorites’ I had to use ‘public with email’ login, which means that the first page you see is the login screen, and for most users who just want to browse this is a huge block.

I tried changing to ‘public’ and added a ‘Favorite’ item in the ‘profile’ page for users to click on and invoke the login page if they want to submit content, but this doesn’t work.

I would like to have open access to the app, and only require login if a user wants to (or when he does an action that requires a login such as favorite or clicking a button which I define).

I hope my issue is clear - anyone have any ideas on how to call the login page, not on launch?

Thank you :slight_smile:

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Same here

This is the exact same issue I’m facing with a number of clients.

They do not want users to have a login friction point to just browse what they have for sale (The majority of ecommerce sites are not gated to begin with).

Users are asked to create an account once they are ready to checkout and before the payment details page.

When they are ready to buy, the idea is to use the filtering option to hide the “Buy Button” for all non signed in users and instead show a “Login” or “Create Profile” button for these users which would trigger the login screen.

It would be seriously helpful to have a “Login trigger” component in the dashboard that we can add to screens.

Here is a usecase for us:

We will use this feature to display options straight after they decide to create an account to make an order. The options will include which will be tied to the logged in user will be:

  • When do they want their food - now or later
  • How do they want their food - Pickup or Delivered
  • Their phone number (Mandatory)

Once these are filled in under the user’s row in their gsheet, they would then be able to view “Add to Cart” buttons under products which were otherwise filtered out/hidden for non logged in users.

Another needed feature is a filter of “Is logged in user” so that we can toggle visibility of elements for logged in Vs. guests.
(this filter is currently disabled when choosing ‘Public’)

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I’m still waiting to hear back if this can officially be supported or if the workaround will be supported long-term, but hopefully this helps.

Here’s how to get signed in user info into every record in your sheet.

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Thanks @Jeff_Hager, the switching bit between Public and Public with Email is something I was not aware of.

The only thing is that we can’t expect a user to use the add to favourites feature to sign in.

The sign in option is available if you have something in the side menu.

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That too, I didn’t know! Thanks @Jeff_Hager

Although it would be most straightforward to have a Button with an action that brings up the sign in screen.

But atleast now with this workaround, I could add a gif could to visually demonstrate to even the most tech illiterate users on how to sign in.

(tap the menu on the top left corner, click sign in, enter email address and wait for an email with your temp pin, enter it)

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Related to this I have two issues;

If I create a a Public app from scratch, and ensure it’s Public when I Publish it, there seems to be no way to view the app from the Glide builder as a Public User. When I open the app, my name and email get added to the User Table, and then I am also “Viewing as (ME)”, which would affect my Visibility of Components when I’m making the app. There never should have been an email logged when I opened a Public app, in my opinion.

This blends into the second issue - I’d like to see a way that the app developer can have some sort of profile that is not cached and has all the defaults set in the app when viewing or logging in. I’m testing and retesting on multiple devices but it seems difficult to try to view the app as a fresh User once you’ve already viewed it on a device. It isn’t practical or desirable to reset the cache every test on every device and every browser.

Hopefully I’m either missing some things and can be set straight, or these issues are being worked on. I did some searching in the Forum and didn’t see any direct discussions around this.

I’m not sure what makes it show up, but I think there is a way to preview as ‘anyone’. Possibly just by unselecting the user you are previewing as.

You could also use incognito mode with the published app in the browser to prevent the cache from saving, so you could view it fresh every time and you wouldn’t have to clear your cache every time.

Ha! It was not obvious to me that clicking on the checkmark beside my name would remove me as the viewer - thanks for that!

I did forget to mention incognito tabs, but this isn’t a realistic User onboarding scenario. So yes, I can do it for some testing, but not for full testing. Interestingly, opening an app in incognito does not trigger the “Add to home screen” with Android/Chrome. (Not a Glide issue.) I have no iPhone to do testing with at this time, but I’ll get one soon-ish.

Related to “Add to home screen”, my app launch on Monday flopped because I failed to understand that viewing the app in the browser was going to be a different experience than viewing it as an “installed” app. It did all my mobile testing from the “installed” version whereas my app is kind-of a one-time-use app and so realistically the User experience will for sure be browser first, if not their only experience. (Not a Glide issue.)

One thing that confuses me about the workflow of adding the app to the home screen is that if you do it, you’re not automatically redirected to that version. You stay in the browser version, at least on Android/Chrome. (Not a Glide issue.)

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I’ve already built some public apps and with Sign in action in certain part of it, I call them hybrids (and I love this kind of app, btw :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:).

That’s the main setup I use:

Tab visibility:

Once the app is public, when someone login into the app, the User > Email is not empty anymore, showing the screens/tabs to the email is signed-in user.

image

Knowing that, when Email column is empty, is showing the information to the public app.

Take a look below.

User > Email is empty (Public app - no email signed-in)

User > Email is not empty (App loged-in - User View)

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Que legal Lucas, I’ll be trying this out today!

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