Do you have plans for offline Bubble apps?

Hey man!

Your list of menu options is slow on loading…

Here’s a funny idea:

Pack your menu into a list, saved in a single item. Use that single cell to populate your repeating group. Let that load first (prevent the RG from loading it’s bigger list by blocking it to wait until the other content has loaded). So the menu loads from the regex parsed cell, and in the moments that people are taking a gander at the menu, your GR can load from the database :smiley:

The reason I say this is that you mentioned that your list rarely changes. In those most beautiful of moments, I really love using a jam packed object into a cell. It loads in a blink and you can extract data from it with good ole regex my friend!

Just a thought.

Have a great day!

Ashley

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This week is the anniversary of the last message in this thread and I thought I should revive it - what’s the update on Bubble getting offline / PWA capabilities?

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Hi,

i am unable to understand that which files do i have to download to save in the root directory, as far as i know bubble does not lets you download the code.
excuse me if the question is basic,

i am a complete newbie

Hey guys,

I know it’s an old topic, but I was studying to resolve my problem (close to this forum discussion) and saw many people interested to resolve this here.
Some observation first:

  • I’m NOT a developer, I have no knowledge about programming. I only know about logic and thats why I’m doing my project on Bubble.

My problem is:
My customer use my app to do some activities on the field and many places don’t have internet. My idea to resolve that is to make another app to be a “field information collector” (I’m think to use the Thunkable to do that). This app will be able to save in native DB when offline and sync with Firebase DB when get online.
On the other side, I have my app with Bubble DB working and I found the plugin Data sync for Firebase (by Zerocode). My idea is sync my Bubble DB with a Firebase DB and sync that Firebase DB with native DB (I think that I can eliminate the Bubble DB and work only with Firebase DB, but first I would like to test that way).

My questions:

  • Someone knows and/or worked with Data sync for Firebase (by Zerocode)?
  • Is my idea possible to do? Is it safety? Is it a good way to resolve that problem? Any other idea?
  • Anybody interested to participate on this project? I’m starting this project now and I’m looking for help.

@emmanuel emmanuel
@ZeroqodeSupport
@csfalcao csfalcao
@roayati roayati
@PWC vincent56
@levon levon
@vladlarin vladlarin

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Hey Andre!

That sounds very smart :sunglasses:

I don’t think a lot of people on this forum (sadly) have experience with Thunkable or architectures of this complexity.

Still, it would be awesome to see this happening and advise in any way we can.
Sorry for not being able to advise much :sweat_smile:

I’m still stuck on this. Recently I tried AppGyver as it supports native mobile app and offline mode and sync, but it has a higher learnig curve than Bubble. Awesome performance but visual builder has some quirks and functions (their versions of workflows) are quite unique. Couldn’t do conditions easily. Debuging is a nightmare.

Also tested Adalo, and while the workflow are impressive easier than Bubble’s, it has limited features and no visual customization besides colors and margins.

But one good thing is Airtable. Bubble is preparing a 2.0 plugin, maybe that can help make it closer to an offline sync DB feature.

Ola @csfalcao, tested Adalo too, not convinced.
I was reading about the use of an Sqlite DB by bubble. I understand that Sqlite was meant for offline use.
So doesnt using Sqlite on a smartphone give the ability to work Offline with a Bubble App ?
… with an extra option to synchronize to some Cloud DB …once connected again to the internet ?
:thinking:

I understand that a Bubble app is 100% online only. So, if while you are using a Bubble app and the internet goes off and you’re creating something, it will create it on a local DB and after it will sync, but while the internet is off your app won’t load any new resources, it includes navigation, new screens etc. For that you have to storage UI files and such, and Bubble apps aren’t that way. I don’t know if PWA can cache, so no real offline use IMO.

Thanks a lot for the details … :sob: I had little hopes that Bubble could overcome the Offline work wall. I’d love to use it but I must say, so many users on the planet still can not expect a connection to be a constant one that it just make this “always online” tech solutions a things for rich countries/areas !
Well that is just out things are… :robot:
Thanks again for your lights !

Hi, @csfalcao, how was your experience with airtable?

Hi @andre89alo,
Have you progress on the Solutions you describe?
I just started working on something similar, using appgyver (remplace thunkable), because I read the learning curve is shorter.

@csfalcao thank you for your message. I am currebtly trying with Appgyver but it is not easy. Could you share your experience with airtable?

Hi there. I moved from house recently and I’m got a little busy time last 2 months, my Airtable experiment went paused.

Thank you for your answer. I am learning appgyver. If I get good result, I will let you know.

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@csfalcao , @kuikout, @vladlarin, @andre89alo, @dharmvivek07, @zelus_pudding, @ashley.benson.tait, @supernaturally, @gurun, @vincent56,

I invite you to see and contribute to this fundraising to create a new plugin. It is already in process and the fundraising is open. I already contribute on it, because it is develop by an experience guy (who created among others: PDF conjurer, leafy maps, orchestra):

Fundraising to create a plugin for iOS and Android with Jasonelle

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Hi Sir, how are you?
Not yet. I worked a bit on this project but I didn’t get success. I tried work with Data sync for Firebase (by Zerocode), but I couldn’t do this plugin works.

Any updates on offline capabilities?

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Would love to see offline app capability.

Bubble allows you to upload a custom service worker to the root of your Bubble domain. So your Bubble app can already have offline capability.

In my experience, it’s possible to cache all static resources from a Bubble app. When the user loses network connectivity, these resources are then retrieved from the cache rather than the network. It works pretty well, actually. You don’t need Bubble themselves to build that feature.

Currently, you’re not able to build caching strategies for content that’s generated dynamically from items in your database, though. Bubble has a particular way of retrieving them from their server using Elasticsearch that makes it impossible at the time of the request to know the type of data it’s requesting. So when it fails because you’re offline, you have no way to know which cached resource to use. Too bad, because that would have been pretty cool.

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Can you share any more info on the use case limitations you found? I’ve been considering attempting a PWA that would sync basic text/images/object data, for example (think ‘email inbox’):

  1. User downloads 10 emails (i.e. the only dynamic data is text and maybe a .png) while online in their Bubble PWA on a mobile device
  2. User goes offline with their mobile device (ex. on the subway)
  3. User archives all 10 emails while offline using the Bubble PWA on their mobile device
  4. User’s mobile device reestablishes a data connection an hour later
  5. Bubble PWA ‘syncs’ with the Bubble server in the background, archiving the 10 emails and also downloading 2 new ‘unread’ emails that arrived during the time that elapsed while the user was offline

There seem to be a couple of edge cases to account for with offline syncing:

  • nulling requests - a user accesses the application from a desktop computer before the mobile device re-establishes a connection and only decides to archive 8/10 emails this time. Sync requests from the mobile device’s PWA needs to be nulled.
  • local storage - User attaches an .png to an email while offline and ‘sends’ the email. The PWA saves the .png locally and then sends it to the server once the mobile device reconnects to the internet.
  • local search - user should be able to search messages via locally cached data for speed and consistency

Doesn’t seem impossible, given that service workers should be able to take care of local storage and search, but this could be a stretch. Dropbox isn’t exactly an easy product to build from scratch (deadlocks, race conditions…yuck)…but, imagine if Bubblers could showcase that kind of functionality!

I have not attempted offline sync with a Bubble app yet and am curious how something like local search would be handled.

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