Is Bubble consistently unreliable?

[mguerrasio]

@dan1

Another thing I noticed in your workflow is that you’re triggering another Custom workflow (Set Reference Values) inside of a Custom workflow. This is something I would avoid. (Imagine you’re at a grocery store and need items from the dairy department, the produce department and the meat department. Triggering multiple workflows at the same time is like trying to fetch things from all three departments at once - something is bound to fall out of the cart).

That is exactly NOT how custom workflows are supposed to work. From the Bubble manual’s Custom Workflow section:

When a workflow is triggered in run mode and hits a trigger a custom event action, the first workflow will pause, the custom event will be run till completion, and the first workflow will resume. Using the debugger can be very helpful to understand the flow of actions if you are hitting some difficulties setting things up.

Custom workflows called from custom workflows is exactly the right kind of code reuse and design that is encouraged and standard in other languages.

What is your reason or experience with Bubble that has you suggesting otherwise?

[gaurav]

+1… Custom workflows are really the centerpiece of a lot of advanced bubble apps and streamline the code. custom workflows calling custom workflows in bubble is the equivalent of functions calling other functions in traditional coding. There should really be no reason to avoid this.

[JonL]

I have more custom workflows in my last app than normal workflows

[ryan8]

I wish i had discovered custom workflows before i made so much of my app with copy and pasting workflows. once i figured out how too user CWFs and the getdata from URL so i could build most of the major groups in reusable elements, life got easier It took me a while to realize you could nav to the same page to update the url string.

LOVE THE CUSTOM WFs !!!

[dan1]

@mguerrasio - thank you for calling that out. Upon reflection, I realize that that analogy is not a good one. You’re correct that a custom workflow runs its course and then the previous workflow resumes. My experience hasn’t proven otherwise.

My intent was to point to streamlining the workflow itself overall, not anything against using custom workflows. (My hunch was that the midstream custom workflow may be the source of issues in the prior workflow due to some updated value, resetting a group’s data, etc.).

And yes, @gaurav, @ryan8 and @JonL - I very much agree that custom workflows are a standard development practice that we should all readily embrace. I hope you didn’t interpret my comment as a suggestion against them.

[JonL]

I didn’t

I know what you mean. CWFs are needed when they are needed. Specially when you want to make sure you finish something before continuing and to follow a DRY approach.

But sometimes it’s wiser to let their workflows do their thing in parallel if there are no dependencies.

CWFs are nice, but are not by any means a panacea

[laurence]

Dan,

I’ll take a closer look at API workflows. I built one at least six months ago and it seems I need to look at it again. Thanks for the nudge.

Regarding the logs, their purpose is to be spontaneous snapshots of what’s happening in the app. I won’t know in advance how many I’ll need and it would be unwieldy to keep track of what I created so I can Make changes to a thing to record a new snapshot at any point in time and have it make sense.

@dan1

Another thing I noticed in your workflow is that you’re triggering another Custom workflow (Set Reference Values) inside of a Custom workflow. This is something I would avoid. (Imagine you’re at a grocery store and need items from the dairy department, the produce department and the meat department. Triggering multiple workflows at the same time is like trying to fetch things from all three departments at once - something is bound to fall out of the cart).

I think @mguerrasio, @gaurav and @ryan8 responded pretty well to this.

I began creating custom workflows inside a reusable element so that I could develop logic for maintaining referential integrity that would be needed on different pages. That attempt completely blew up in my face. For now, I’m just using custom workflows on one page so I can encapsulate functionality and have it available in response to different user actions on the page.

In many cases, sequential dependency is exactly what I need.

@mguerrasio

From the Bubble manual’s Custom Workflow section:

When a workflow is triggered in run mode and hits a trigger a custom event action, the first workflow will pause, the custom event will be run till completion, and the first workflow will resume. Using the debugger can be very helpful to understand the flow of actions if you are hitting some difficulties setting things up.

Custom workflows called from custom workflows is exactly the right kind of code reuse and design that is encouraged and standard in other languages.

From this, it would appear that custom workflows are exactly what I need to get things done in the right sequence.

[laurence]

Thanks, Nigel. I always appreciate your level-headed thinking.

@NigelG

Maybe start another thread and split out the frustration from the issue resolution.

I will be creating a test app for sharing. What I think would be best is to clone the app I already have and strip out extraneous pages, tables and live data. That seems a lot easier and more dependable than trying to rebuild a subset of what I have in a new app.

I should probably know this, but what is the process for cloning a complete app?

[JonL]

Copy app from your apps dashboard.

[dan1]

You can make a copy from your bubble.is dashboard. (Here’s a video walkthrough). As well, when you make the copy/clone, you have the option of making a copy of the database at the same time.

[laurence]

Yes, there it is.

Thanks, @dan1 and @JonL.

[laurence]

Well folks, I’ve created a scaled down version of the app that seems even more broken than the original.

Here’s a link to the new forum thread where I provide a link to the editor:

Page is not loading properly - closed

9/11/18: Thanks to all who helped me on this. Faye, Mishav and Marc have been very helpful. I am “closing” this topic and removing the sample app. The problems I encountered have not been resolved, but I have learned enough from this discussion to pull back and take an entirely different approach to the page that has given me so much trouble. 9/10/18: Because this problem is not going away and is terribly slippery, I’m updating the topic with current info in this opening post. There are cu…

Have fun!

[nicolas_dap]

@laurence

Reality is completely the opposite when simple database updates cannot be handled properly by Bubble

Bubble is a no-code tool, not an academy. No one should expect Bubble to teach you how to write good process. I’m glad it enables me to program quickly si I can easily run tests and maily learn by myself.

@laurence

simple database updates cannot be handled properly by Bubble

@laurence

For what should be a relatively simple app, solving a basic, real-world problem, Bubble is completely falling down on the job.

However, hundreds of programers who even don’t know writing code succeed in getting their apps do what they expect. Code or not, whatever, programing needs the right logic.

@laurence

I’d rather be writing database routines I can trust than design (shadow boxing in the fog) around platform flaws.

Obviously. But I don’t see the point of this comparison on a no-code tool’s forum.