Need to understand Airtable with Bubble

[eurllausaro]

Hello Guys ! It’s my first post here so Hi

I reach the community because I’m really new to bubble, I took the challenge to built my restaurant website on it to learn it. And for most part I found it awesome, and the left part it’s just that i’m just a rookie to fully understand all Bubble haha.

So my problem is about Airtable with Bubble, let me explain, I use Airtable to be able to use the data of my table either for my website and my promotion flyer that I do in illustrator. Huge time saving for me, when it’ll work haha

So in bubble I have 3 blocs (with text, img, etc) and I went them to show a specific row in my table, so I use the airtable data path with the item selection " Item # "

This container control this bloc

You can see the website here : https://restaurant-le-repere.fr

My trouble is that I have this order in airtable

I have my blocs set with Airtable:Soirée Resto:Item #3 / Item #2 / Item #1
Because I want my event to show in a descending order as I would like the nearest date to show first.
But, I don’t know why the item order does not correspond between airtable and bubble like Item #1 on bubble refers to the second line in airtable… Don’t know why.
I’ve tried to change Item #1 by FirstItem and it refers well to the first line, but for the 2 others, I’m stuck…

So is there a way in bubble to ask in airtable something like firstItem for the fist bloc, firstItem+1 for the second (to have the second row in airtable) and item+2. It’s not the most optimized way as when I’ll increase lines in airtable I need to change everytime +3 , +4, +5 … in bubble
I don’t really know what will work the best for that, maybe be able to show the last 3 row created so when I add a row in airtable bubble will keep showing the 3 last. But I absolutely have no idea what to put in data source to be able to have this render.

If you have any ideas, it will be very welcome

And I’m sorry if my english is not that understandable

Thanks !

[pattokane]

Hi @eurllausaro, how are you?

My first questions is why are you using airtable?

When you could do all this within bubble faster, easier and cheaper?

[pattokane]

Whenever a client of mine has used airtable (wont listen when I suggest using bubble) it has only caused issues and sometimes massive ones down the line once the airtable DB get big

[eurllausaro]

I’m fine thank you !

Actually, I use Airtable (I’m on the free version) because I used it before. I really don’t konw a thing about bubble data, doing it with only bubble will slove everything ?

[pattokane]

Yes, if you spend the time getting to understand bubble and how powerful it is, it will solve all these problems for you and also…

You will have a much faster platform in the end
Better end user experience
Better overall functionality of your platform
Better load speeds and WU
Pretty much better everything

There are a few ways you can go about this…

Build it out yourself and take the time to learn how to do it all
Get a developers to build it out for you in a very short amount of time and with best practice in mind
Get a coach to teach you how to do it

I can help you with the developer and coaching and I am always happy to answer questions

[Sarah_Esteve]

Si besoin d aide en français n hésite pas

Pas sur airtable mais sur Bubble

@eurllausaro

[eurllausaro]

Thanks a lot !
I’ve tried to use bubble instead of airtable, so it work, kind of. Actually it works the same I can’t figure out how to have the row that I what to be showing (the last 3)

Thanks !

[eurllausaro]

Bonjour Sarah !

Écoute avec plaisir ! ça sera déjà plus simple de se comprendre

En fait mon soucis c’est que j’ai ma table de data sur bubble, et en fait sur le site j’aimerais que ressortent uniquement les 3 dernière ligne de cette table triées par date de création.

En gros j’ai mes soirées de prévu dans ma table, quand une soirée est passé, je crée une nouvelle ligne pour une futur soirée et celle apparait automatiquement en “effaçant” celle qui est passé.
Tu vois le cheminement un peu ?

Merci beaucoup en tout cas !

[pattokane]

So if this was done with just bubble you could have a date range and once an evening has passed and you add a new one, the evening that has passed will no longer show. It will start be in the DB but just will not show on your RPG.

This issue you are having is purely because bubble and airtable sort data differently and make it hard to talk to each other… this issue is greatly extenuated when it comes to reading large DB’s from airtable.

For example…

We had a platform that I was working on and everything was fine through testing, platform and speed were running decently and we handed it over to the client. The client started uploading data into two different tables and as they did that (table only had about 50-100 entries) the load times of pages and RPG’s was greatly affected.

We spent days trying to fix the speed and performance but unfortunately we just had to bit the bullet and change to bubble. Once in the bubble DB, all issues were gone and everything was much easier to work with.

Airtable is great for what it is, a place to sort huge DB’s for cheap but when it comes to working with the data and doing it quickly, it falls apart.

If you are looking for an external DB then I would recommend looking at Xano

The Scalable No-Code Backend: Xano

But I would recommend sticking with the bubble DB over everything else first

[jagdish_bajaj]

I have more than one client using Airtable and Bubble. This is such a pain since there is never one single source of truth and we are constantly battling data.

I would strongly recommend that you store all data on one platform. It will take some time to learn how to do things in Bubble, but the investment is well worth it.

[eurllausaro]

So if this was done with just bubble you could have a date range and once an evening has passed and you add a new one, the evening that has passed will no longer show. It will start be in the DB but just will not show on your RPG.

How do you do that ? I’m now using only bubble, I recreated the table that I had in airtable, and (even if I still need to accommodate a bit) it works great. Well I’m at the same level than before. But for now item#1,2,3 are related to Row#1,2,3. That’s a step for me

Now how could I tell in the data source field that I want :
The first group/Block related to the 3rd last row in the data base
The second group related to the 2nd last row
And the third group to the last row ?

I’ve been trying to understand the data link in the data source field but for now it’s too complex for me.

Thanks !

[pattokane]

Are your rows always one day per row? @eurllausaro

[eurllausaro]

Yes, one row represent one event to show.

And would love to be showing in this order

The first group/Block related to the 3rd last row in the data base
The second group related to the 2nd last row
And the third group to the last row ?

in those blocks

Do you think it’s possible ?

[pattokane]

Yes, if each row has a date to it and only one event per day is showing then this should work…

In the RPG do a search for events that the event date or creation date (however you have them set up) is greater than current time/date +days-3

This should work.

If you cant figure it out, i will set up a demo for you when i get up in the morning

[eurllausaro]

I see where you’re going, but I think i’ve explained badly. My fault

My data looks like this. And I have an event per row, but it’s not update every day, maybe every week or 2 weeks it depends. My goal with these data is to be shown and order by “created date” and only show the 3 last created.

So for this exemple just showing row# 2,3 and 4, in this order

And then, when I add a new event when the event #2 will be over, the new row of the event #5 will replace (in the front end) #4 in the third block, event #4 will replace #3 in the second block and #3 will replace #2 in the fisrt block. And so on, as I add row in the datasheet.

Hope it’s clearer now

I was thinking of something like that (purely invented but for demo purpose )
For the first block (#2 event in the exemple) in the RPG : search for soirée (name of my data table) last row -2
For the second block : search for soirée last row - 1
For the third block : search for soirée last row

or
search for soirée creation date : last (and last -1, last - 2)

But I keep trying I can’t find the right path for that

[jagdish_bajaj]

When you search for the data, there is an additional operator “items until#”. I think that should do the job for you. If you set this up to 3, and sort by created date, users will always see the latest 3 events.

So, in the repeating group, expand on the “Do a search for” by clicking on the “more” text and look for “items until”.

[eurllausaro]

Thanks for helping !

Actually I don’t have repeating group set up, I have each bloc in a independent group, so each group need to target a specific row.

I’ve tried with repeating group (for knowledge purpose haha) and it shows the 3 last rows but in the wrong order, like the order I would like is 2 - 3 - 4 and instead of that it shows 4 - 3 - 2.

Anyways, I don’t use repeating group because I can’t figure out how to have absolutely the same layout parameters than a normal group. Especially on mobile view where repeating group overlap on each other…

[jagdish_bajaj]

I would suggest using a Repeating Group. You can easily change the order of the items to the right one. Also you can include a group inside the Repeating Group (or even move the one you’ve created already into the RG) and control the layout parameters at the Group level. Also I am quite sure that you can address the issues on mobile view as well.

All I am saying is that the other issues you are facing can be resolved, but fundamentally a Repeating Group is the right element for doing what you want.

[pattokane]

I would also highly recommend a RPG as they are much easier to work with and filter data the way you want