Frontend database

[dannyliu]

i agree here-- a list of texts and numbers shouldn’t be causing performance issues. How is your database structured? How are you loading things into the repeating group?

JS Objects are the closest thing to “frontend database” here, but I don’t think you need them.

[ryanck]

Hey @sudsy and @dannyliu

I don’t have an issue performance wise but with the database I need to keep for each line item two record, one as valid and another one as a draft one.

So that I’m not saving the valid ones all the time. And then you can see how difficult it is to manage loads of draft items and valid ones.

That’s the reason, so I can keep things simple.

Do you know if it would be possible to do as:

@ryanck

I mean in the RG I need to have the line items and the user needs to modify the line item’s inputs that are inside the RG not just like in the video that it has the inputs outside the RG.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to help! Highly appreciated.

[sudsy]

@ryanck

I don’t have an issue performance wise but with the database I need to keep for each line item two record, one as valid and another one as a draft one.

I see. I’m certainly a big fan of simplicity, but I’m a bit unclear as to why two separate records are needed for each line item. Could a single record with a Status field be used - i.e. just change that field’s value from “draft” to “final” when the invoice is saved/finalized?

[ryanck]

Hey @sudsy

I wish it could like that but no.

Let’s think that a user creates a new invoice but then after, he wants to edit the invoice. If he modifies the values of the line items he is actually touching the status yes so even if he does not save the invoice, he is actually modifying the line items.

Because of this what I do is whenever a user edits an invoice, I duplicate the line items and set them as draft so if the user touches those line items and then leave without saving, the valid lines won’t be affected.

Hope it does make sense.

Hope you have some idea.

Thanks a ton!

[TipLister]

may I ask, what is wrong with touching the database?
it so happens that this is the most efficient way to do it.

[sudsy]

So the duplicate line items are in case the user wants to cancel/revert the edits?

[ryanck]

Yes the duplicated line items are in case a user wants to edit the invoice so he does not edit the validated ones.

[dannyliu]

isn’t there a 10x easier way to do this?

1. load the list of invoices onto the page as a custom state.
2. Create a form within a RG that shows the invoice, with the initial value coming from the custom state.
3. When the user modifies the form, they must click “save”-- no auto binding. Since every RG’s cell contains one invoice, you can just make changes to that single invoice when the user finishes editing a draft.

you can also opt to display the information as a popup as well, and send a different RG cell’s invoice into the popup.

This way, you are never making changes to any list, and there shouldn’t be a load time.

[ryanck]

Hey @dannyliu

Thanks for your reply but I must show the invoice itself with its invoice line items.

Cannot let the user edit the invoice form the list of invoices. The user must click on an invoice and show the invoice page that contains the line items.

Pretty tricky I know.

[dannyliu]

@ryanck

but I must show the invoice itself with its invoice line items.

Cannot let the user edit the invoice form the list of invoices. The user mu

I see-- let’s say you have a page to show a single invoice, and that the Invoice data type contains different things and lists of things.

You can load a single invoice onto the invoice page, and save it somewhere (let’s just call this the custom state), and populate the page with dropdowns and inputs. The initial value of every input and dropdown/multidropdown are the things and lists of things from the invoice stored in the custom state. (you only have to load the invoice once).

The user can then edit the invoice by modifying the inputs-- nothing happens to the DB.

When “Save” is clicked, you can create a new invoice with the values stored in the inputs/dropdowns. If you need to modify the invoice in the custom state, you can also run corresponding workflow actions when the user presses “save”.

I think this is not necessarily about cutting out the bubble DB, but rather minimizing the amount of times you have to search/load stuff in and out of it

[keith]

Despite a bunch of pretty smart people chiming in here in this thread, what the OP is trying to do is NOT easy in Bubble, even though it should be.

We have no access to Things (objects) except by interaction with the database and in the OP’s case, parallel lists contained in multiple Custom States IS NOT viable (due to the set-like nature of Bubble lists). This is somewhat more manageable if using List Shifters instead of custom states, but it is still likely the OP will run into issues with null values in their parallel lists.

Because of all this, I did start on making a plugin specifically for use cases like this, but it’s not quite ready for prime time. (I posted a short video of this a while back.)

Here’s me talking about the null value problem: Live Bubbling with @keith! Talking about how Bubble handles empty list values, inconsistently. Also, updates to List Popper and Friends to work around that

That new plugin, dubbed “Karter” is still in development, but if the OP is interested, I could make them a beta tester and give them access to that plugin. (Private message me if interested.)

[gazinhio]

Cheers for sharing my video. This is a bit of an old version with a step missing, take a look at the more upto date version below. This focusses on front-end looping by putting line item data in custom state lists and writing to the DB only at the end. It uses @keith 's ListShifter for looping.

Looping In Bubble To Build An Invoicing App

[ryanck]

Morning @dannyliu, @keith and @gazinhio

Thanks to all for your suggestions but as @keith said, it´s not easy to do this kind of thing and I´ve been searching to do it since the beginning with Bubble but at the end I always ended up to touching the database because of how Bubble handles lists. There are so many things to consider indeed, just for line items.

@keith Yes, I would love to try it out the beta version of your plugin since this thing is something I´m trying to deal with every year with no luck. PM´ing you right away.

Also, nice work with the video:

@keith

Here’s me talking about the null value problem: Live Bubbling with @keith! Talking about how Bubble handles empty list values, inconsistently. Also, updates to List Popper and Friends to work around that

Thanks a lot and have a great day to all.

[sudsy]

@ryanck

List of items could be big.

Just curious how many line items there might be. Hundreds? Less than 100?

I’m still not sure I understand the intended UX, but if you need to iterate over a RG, I assume you’re aware of @vini_brito’s Orchestra plugin (original announcement here).

I’ve not used it, but I believe it would allow you to run a workflow for each cell (and thus access/save each line item’s input values, etc.) Of course, there’d be an http request for each line item, but if that became an issue, you could probably get around it by using auto-bind and scheduling an API workflow on a list.

[ryanck]

Hey @sudsy

I haven´t used that yet but I remember Vini told me that it might not be possible.

I´m waiting to see @keith ´s solution.

Thanks a lot for your reply.

[ryanck]

Hey @keith

Is this the plug-in you were talking about?

List Shifter: Reverse, Rotate, Swap and ITERATE (Loop) Over Bubble Lists | Now at v1.4: Adds Numeric Option, GET INDEX Action

Hey @stu_bowes, I get it. This is actually a pretty simple algorithm, but one that would be an absolute pain to implement in Bubble. A pretty efficient implementation of this in JavaScript, would just be: function reconcile(list1, list2) { var arr1 = [...list1], arr2 = [...list2] arr2.forEach(item => { var index = arr1.indexOf(item) index > -1 && arr1.splice(index, 1) }) return arr1 } This would actually be a pain to execute from Run JavaScript due to it needing…

[Future]

Hey, i don’t know if this could help, but it’s this what you’re trying to achieve? (plugin from gaurav)

RepeatingGroup Tools

Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.

[keith]

Hi @ryanck - no, that’s just a very simple plug I did for Stu’s specific problem. If you PM me the bubble name of your app, I can give your app access to a beta version of my cart/parallel list plugin.

[ryanck]

Hey @keith

I´ve just sent yo a PM.

Thank you so much.

[ryanck]

Hey @chad

Still with this.

Do you have a live example so I can get my around it? I just don´t see how can I work with it.

Thanks a lot.