HELP ! Making a decision

[Hernan_De_Luca]

Hello there! First of all I’m glad to have stumbled upon AppGyver. The platform and the idea behind it are awesome! Thank you for creating such a tool.

I just started with the whole app designing thing and I’m trying to create something with Composer but I’m going around in circles here. The project is super simple (I guess) but I can’t find my way around it.

I had something done in Excel (VBA) and I understand that there aren’t any options to translate that into an app. However, I was willing to start from scratch in composer as it’s also a good way to learn but I’m stuck.

Read many articles and wandered around the documentation but I’m still lost. So if anyone can help I would really appreciate it as I’m going CRAZY here.

SO:

What I need is a simple data collector app that collects details in several fields and then shows them all together. This will be mainly Names and sometimes a description of what they do or some contact details, next to their name. At the moment, I don’t need to have many instances of the recordsets.

Meaning, for example:

There will be a page with the following fields: Project Manager, Director, Assistant, Secretary, etc. (Those values will be their respective names)

They are different positions in the project with ONLY ONE record. (Then, we might include email and mobile phone for each individual). But everything will be on display and straight forward. So I’ll have a textbox for each field with its respective label and then if I want to have a phone for the person, I’ll put another textbox next to it for that data, with the label Director’s phone for example.

So, I don’t need to navigate through many records as there will always be ONE director ONE Project manager, etc.

THEN, there might be some arrays for some other areas where I’ll need to have more than one record for the same field. For example Tasks for the Day where that will be a list. (Similar to the Todo app from the Appgyver Tutorial Videos).

My problem is that at the moment I can’t seem to be able to even keep the name field saved. I followed the Todo App Tutorial but I don’t need an array. It’s just the one Textbox with a Name I enter and I need that to be saved for when I open the app again and also updated if I change the value of the textbox.

Simple stuff like having an excel sheet and writing something in a cell, closing the file and reopen it to edit it. Just text stored. One record. That’s it.

ALSO:

As there will be too many fields in the final project, (many positions and contact details) do it need to set a Property in the Local resource for every field I want to create?

Hope it all makes sense and anyone can help as I’m going around in circles here.

Sorry for the long text but I’m trying to be specific.

Thank you !!!

[Harri_Sarsa]

Sorry for taking a while to respond! Composer should definitely be able to accommodate that.

If you want to persist just an arbitrary set of fields, you can create an app variable e.g. person. Then, on the Global Canvas (accessible via the page selector on the top right), add a Receive event node and change its event type to App variable ‘person’ changed, and attach a Set item to storage flow to the event, so that you have e.g. item key persistedPerson and data set to the person app variable. This logic makes it so that whenever the person app variable is changed, it gets persisted to storage.

Then, we just need to attach a Get item from storage node to the App launched event on global canvas that gets our persistedPerson item, and add a Set app variable node that then sets the output of the storage node (i.e. data that was in the storage under the given key) into the person app variable. Note that you need to use the Formula binding type to set the output as the schema will be incompatible (something we’re working on fixing).

Then, it’s just a matter of binding your view components to fields of appVars.person.

Was this what you were looking for?

[Hernan_De_Luca]

Hi Harri, hope you’re well and many many thanks for responding to my query. I’ve been busy with personal stuff but now I’m back to the Composer.
I read your answer but honestly I just can’t believe this has to be so complicated. I sort of tried what you suggested but I don’t fully understand it. I mean the whole point of the AppGyver is to develop apps with minimal coding and make it user friendly but, I’m going around in circles here!
I’ll try to simplify my explanation: I need something very very simple. A text field that keeps data stored in the client side. A textbox that if it’s blank, when I open the app again appears blank. If I input in that textbox the word “hello” and then close the app, when I reopen it, the value of that textbox is “hello” and if I modify that textbox to “hello world” that should be updated. Like a text file in Notepad. Like everything else works, like a cell in excel. Very very simple.
So, following AppGyvers premises, I thought that if I have a data resource created and the relevant variables created (Like we can see in the tutorial videos), just by binding the textbox to the variable should be enough. But it isn’t. And I can’t seem to call or populate that data already stored into that textbox, when the app is launched every time. (The text box is blank, despite the fact that the data is still stored on the phone). Something as simple as, maybe… and OnLoad procedure or similar.

Obviously, I will have many fields, not only one, but I need to know how to do it first and then I’ll just add other fields. So, in the end it will be a few pages with textboxes storing one piece of text and keeping it that way.

Does that makes sense? Is a very very basic and simple thing and I can’t find a way in Composer to do it.

THANK YOU SO MUCH IN ADVANCE:

[Harri_Sarsa]

I agree it’s a bit convoluted – we should really have a flag for “persist variable” for app variables that would just do this magically.

I’ll try to find the time to put a proper example/tutorial together soon, I’ll ping you here!

[Hernan_De_Luca]

Hi Harri

Hope you’re keeping well. Have you had a chance to have a look at my inquiry? I’m still struggling with that simple step to handle data.

Hope you get a chance and help.

Thanks buddy.