GitHub Code into my App

Need help Plugins
1

Hi guys, first post.

I’m looking for a solution to my problem, being as I’m a total non coder.

I want to build a dynamic QR code generator into my app, with the ability for each subscriber to log into their own personal set of QR codes.

Now there are plenty of static QR code plugins in the marketplace, but I can’t find any that generates dynamic QR codes.

There are a couple of options outside Bubble:

  1. There’s code on GitHub but I have no idea on how to incorporate this code into the app, or how to amend it so it fits in with my stated needs above.

  2. There’s an app listed in code canyon that basically does the same thing for usd28 but again, I’d have no idea how to incorporate this into my plan.

I can have a go at replicating one of the dynamic QR code sites out there in Bubble but would fall down when it came to the code required for actual dynamic code creation.

So my questions are:

  1. Has anyone used GitHub code within their app? If so, can you give me any guidance on how to try and incorporate this in my project?

  2. Has anyone come across, or used a dynamic QR code generator within the Bubble environment?

  3. If not, and bearing in mind there’s virtually zero budget for additional coding, can anyone give me an idea as to how and where I can find someone who can maybe build a plugin with dynamic QR code functionality with approximate costs and time to delivery?

Cheers.

David

2

Yes, just depends on what kind of code you’re talking about.

Yes, have you checked any of the QR generators on the plugin marketplace? If so, do any of them suite your needs? If not, what in specific are you looking for it to do that these don’t do already?

Screenshot 2022-10-20 at 11.30.19 AM
Screenshot 2022-10-20 at 11.30.19 AM1974×1084 266 KB

3

Hi,
As I mentioned in my opening description, I’ve checked out all the static code generators…I need them to generate a dynamic QR code (which does not need to be reprinted) rather than a static QR code.
I have found a dynamic QR code generator on GitHub:

but I have no idea how to incorporate this code into my app. Ideally, I’d tie up the dynamic code with one of the static code plugins above to provide an all-in-one solution.

Any thoughts on how to proceed?
Cheers.
David

4

What does static and dynamic mean for you in this context?

1 Like
5

A static QR code is a one-off QR code where the destination URL (or whatever it’s linked to) cannot be changed…therefore, you need to redesign a different new static QR code every time.

A dynamic QR code allows you to change the destination URL from a dashboard, meaning the printed, or embedded QR code does not need to be physically altered.

I want to build that dashboard, whereby clients can log in and change their destination URLs via their own private access to their QR codes.

6

Yeah, so to accomplish this, you would have to – when you create your QR code – assign it some unique URL and then – via some means – redirect that unique URL to whatever destination your user wants that to have.

The issue you’re going to run into in Bubble is that you don’t have control over your own web server and there’s no programmatic way to create redirects.

Now, you could do some sort of janky homegrown redirect and, you could create a Thing (a custom datatype) in your app that represents the QR code and you’d give it a slug and you would use the URL for the page that represents this object to be the destination of the QR code. And this Thing would also have a field on it that represents the URL of where the user wants it to go.

And then, you’d have a dynamic page of that type that, when it loads, does “Open an external website” to the destination URL.

Now, that’s not the same as some real API endpoint that would return an actual redirect response, but it’s similar. But note that, every time someone hits the QR code URL, you’ll be consuming your own app resources to open that page and then navigate the user to the ultimate destination. (It’s going to consume a lot of capacity and will not scale well.) But you could do this.

The other alternatives include using some service that has an API that provides exactly what you need. One of these is Rebrandly (https://www.rebrandly.com/) and it does exactly what you want to do (generates a QR code and a shortened link and the destination of the shortened link can be changed in future… and all of this can be done programmatically through their API. Obviously there are costs, but you can basically just whitelabel Rebrandly.

bit.ly might also have all of this as well. I have no idea how the two compare cost-wise or Bubble API Connector friendly-wise, though implementing the Rebrandly API in Bubble is quite simple.

(Obvs the next step up would be to build your own link shortenting service with a little external database and stuff on some other platform, but you won’t be doing that directly in Bubble. Also, if you were hoping to build a Rebrandly clone in Bubble, well, you won’t be doing that either but you can use Rebrandly in the way I describe above.)

Edit: surely there are many other QR code services with APIs out there, like qr.io and a simple Google search will surface them.