Bubble.io is great, but sometimes I find myself on a strange place where I have to work with single variable references where it is hard to move sets of data. What I really need are things like “structs” or “dicts”.
I’ve been trying to use “reusable elements” placing values on fields and then use the workflows as methods, but there is a problem in persistance when I need to save the values to the database.
I’ve found that you can create fake API’s and configure “stuct” like data types and then use them on the application. You can even set “things” with fields of this type!
I would like to ask bubble.io team and the community if this is a good practice? Is there any other “more compliant” way of doing this?
Been there, done that… It is ok if you want to serialize the data in some way and save it on the database or make a request to an API, but then it is a pain to retrieve it back.
On text format you can’t use it on the editor interface and make use of the cool features that bubble provides as it is a recognized data structure/type.
Managing strings on the bubble editor interface in general is a big mess. I’m not saying this lightly… At the moment I have a json object with more than 30 fields, some of them with numbers (prevent nulls), booleans (format as number), strings (format json safe), … to put a new element on the “Arbitrary Text” is more than 8 clicks and then you have to be aware of the carrier returns within json (that will break stuff in some situations).
Create a clean struct is a great solution. The place where it is created isn’t, IMHO, a very nice place. But if it is the only solution… I’m ok with it.
There are a couple of plugins that will help you convert plain text to JSON and could probably close the gap. But I wonder if that’s a less elegant solution than the one you already have…
Josh @ Support Dept
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I’ve used all JSON pluggins, even created my own (that works fine with “Things”, but can’t work with variables on elements).
What I’m trying to achieve with this question isn’t a JSON loader/retriever. What I want is a way to have “complex” data structures that work on the editor interface seamlessly. It seems that it can be achieved as a side effect of these fake API’s, Is it a good practice?
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