[🎓 Glide Tutorial - Simple Booking App] What’s going on Gliders! A member of Loqode School recently had a question about booking/scheduling functionality in Glide, so I thought I’d share here too. For this particular use-case the time slots are exactly 30 minutes each and span from 8am to 4pm… But you can very easily tweak this solution to suit your needs (e.g. variable length bookings). Of course there are plenty of alternate ways to achieve the same functionality, but this appears to be a very simple option. It utilises what is known as a “Helper Table” (shoutout to @Darren_Murphy) to check for double-bookings on the fly and only allows users to select time slots that are free. Enjoy! :clinking_glasses:

Thanks Darren, glad you enjoy them :popcorn: And I’d expect nothing less! Always appreciate your input. Your 100% correct in saying the UserID and Name columns aren’t used… Forgot to remove them when simplifying the app, and while recording I went on full auto-pilot mode explaining everything column by column without the penny dropping that they were now redundant :rofl: You have a keen eye! Thats a great idea, thanks for explaining :+1: Makes sense and it’s a very simple change to make. I’d normally use Luxon (Other > Date & Time > Format Date) to standardise the dates but I kept it simple for the tutorial in order to get the point across, but you’re correct in pointing that out :pray:

[image] Loqode: I’d normally use Luxon (Other > Date & Time > Format Date) to standardise the dates but I kept it simple for the tutorial in order to get the point across, but you’re correct in pointing that out I’ve even had inconsistent results with that one in the past. When it was first added to Glide it seemed to be particularly buggy so I got turned right off it. It might be better now, I’m not sure. I just avoid it because I find that I can almost always get what I need with a bit of Date math :man_shrugging:

[image] Darren_Murphy: I’ve even had inconsistent results with that one in the past. When it was first added to Glide it seemed to be particularly buggy so I got turned right off it. Interesting! I’ve used it sporadically for the past 5-6 months and haven’t come across any bugs yet :crossed_fingers: but I’ll definitely keep an eye out. I wonder if anyone else has dealt with issues/inconsistencies with it lately… :thinking:

It is always an issue… I would rely on Java and transform to Glide… for the general uniform results

I had a bit of a rant about it below: [image] Time Format Ask for Help The other thing you need to do is test it at different times of the year. Early on, when I was trying to use it, I found that it would sometimes get the day and month mixed up, but only under certain circumstances, and only if the date was ambiguous. For example, today is September 25th. In the US, they write that as 9/25/2022. In the real world, we write it as 25/9/2022. But either way, it’s obvious that it’s September 25. It can’t be anything else, because there is no 25th month. But, le…

Great tutorial @Loqode! Thanks for sharing :pray: How would you approach this issue… If two or more people are using the app at the same time and select the same booking slot… at the end of the flow I assume only one will win. How would you temporarily disable a time slot while someone is filling out details and release it if they back out? Maybe set a timestamp when they enter the slot and give ‘em 5 min?

the flush app… solution… lol (plus clever script to deal with it)

I agree! I have used both methods for a long time and they both work fine so far. In the beginning, when the Format Date plugin did not exist, the trick to convert the dates to an integer was something mandatory but I can bet that it works without problems currently. [image] Furthermore, I think that since the “Respect Time Zones” feature was released, any relation that uses 2 date columns will work just fine if both have the “Respect Time Zones” feature enabled so, there is no need to use the trick. Technically, which method is faster to sort/lookup data if the key field is a number or a text? … a number! When your dataset is small, you can’t see the difference in response time, but if you have more than 100k+ rows, the improvement is noticeable. In short and as advice: do not rule out the trick at all! :wink: Saludos a todos!

Thanks Eric! Happy to share. Here’s one way of doing it :thinking: I wouldn’t use timers to temporarily disable it etc, what I would probably do is add a simple if/else check in the action that’s triggered on Submit. Here’s how I’d set that up: Add a Lookup column named Validation/All Bookings to the Booking Form table. Select Bookings > Date & Time > Full as the value. Add an Array Contains Element column named Validation/Date Taken next to it. Select Validation/All Bookings as the values and Date & Time > Full Selection as the “To Find”. Run an if/else scenario in the action that is submitting the booking. If “Date Taken = Not Checked” then proceed as usual. Else show notification to select another time (e.g. Someone has just taken this slot, please select another time). Hopefully that makes sense! Not sure how quickly the Lookup column would be updated with the newly added booking, but off the top of my head this is how I’d do it. [Xnapper-2023-06-08-08.59.17] [Xnapper-2023-06-08-09.04.16] [Xnapper-2023-06-08-09.04.47]

🗓️ Simple Booking App Tutorial (No Double Bookings)

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Loqode June 7, 2023, 11:52am 12

In the real world

Thank you for pointing it out though, good information to have on hand. I’ll watch for any oddities in the future… And if it’s relation-based and mission critical then something like your simple math solution may be the safest bet.

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🗓️ Simple Booking App Tutorial (No Double Bookings)

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