Hi guys, Maybe this has already been asked and I missed it. But when Bubble makes an expression constructor, where you can change any part between the AND/OR operators and the entire expression will not break. Yes, this has already been partially done, but if I start changing the first part of the expression, then the remaining 5 parts are deleted and must be added again. This is a huge pain of daily work.
In addition, the order of the conditions is very important, since Bubble can interrupt the check of the remaining conditions if it does not make sense. This way it will be easier for developers to change the order of conditions and edit them → optimize the app → save WU and resources.
Haha, I even found my own idea from 2023. So please SUPPORT
Does anyone agree?
I even asked the AI to draw me what it might look like
A few years ago, Bubble introduced a new version of the expression editor in a beta features. This allowed to modify the expression almost at any place by adding or removing part. But they removed this beta because this was full of bugs (most users turned on the beta when they needed and turn it off after because of that).
We was expecting a new version of that… but they choose to revamp the whole editor instead and nothing happened since…
Wow, Thank you!
I seem to remember this composer. I also turned it off immediately.
But it seems to me that they chose some strange interface: they tried to maintain the previous view, where the user could edit absolutely any element of the expression. I would do this as a separate window, like Arbitrary text, where the user mix separate expressions into one common one.
Overall, it’s a sad they stopped it. It feels like a doable task, but maybe they chose the wrong path. Of course they know better
I also know that @brenton.strine is working right now on an advanced expression editor that looks very interesting.
My approach was to keep it simple, with this feature not allowing editing of the expression itself, but just splitting and reordering parts of it (between AND or OR). Editing is immediately more complex as it depends on the context of the full project and where the dynamic expression is, so I prefer to let the Bubble engine do it.
Working well so far but not finished; I’m implementing parenthesis compatibility. Need to check also the behavior on the new properties editor design, and do some polishing.
This approach is only useful for the boolean expressions, not the complex data expressions, but it already helped me a lot.
I will also reach out to Brenton to see if we can join forces to build the ultimate expression editor that covers more use cases.
In any case, if you can share your thoughts on what exactly your dream expression editor would look like, I think we have all the tools to build it.
Wow, amazing! It will be interesting to see what you come up with.
The biggest problem is that if you change the first condition, then all the remaining 100% are lost. If you change not the first conditions, then the previous and subsequent conditions most often do not break, but sometimes it happens.
By the way, it would also be cool to rename each condition if desired, so that you can see the general logic of the condition and not its implementation. For example, instead of
‘Search Users:first_item is not empty AND Search Products:first item is empty’
the user would see
‘User is active AND User does not have products’
Not sure it’s a good idea to work on a renaming logic of expressions. It’s been like that since the beginning of Bubble, people are used to the terminology, there is no need to force people to re-learn everything.
Yeah, with my approach there is always a workaround to edit the first part: you put that part on last position, then you edit it.
If needed, you can put it back in first position once it’s done, but with proper parenthesis management, it’s not even necessary.
I will wait to see @brenton.strine work before putting too much effort into making this feature production ready.
But I will try to make a video of it so you can give some feedback.
