How to use Excell tables to create storage on device?
Hello everybody. The answer to this question should seem very simple to the vast majority of programmers in the group, but for people like me who don’t know anything, “the hole is further down”.
Please tell me and show me the way, if any.
Is it possible to convert data from an Excell table so that I can use that data within an application that uses on-device storage?
For anyone who is a programmer, the question has several parts that are important to us who are not programmers:
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Convert the excell table to something or something that can be used in the app (not necessarily doing this within AppGyver or with an app)
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Make this content available within the application in some way;
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Use the reading and search features to show the user the data of this content.
Again, I know that for programmers, just say: do this, do that, fix this and that’s the end of it…
…but for those who aren’t a programmer, this explanation doesn’t always solve it, and sometimes it even causes more problems…
Can anyone help?
Today I have an Excel spreadsheet with more than 3 thousand rows and about 4 or 5 columns and I would like to have an application that allows me to use this spreadsheet, so that the user can search for data from it, from a certain row or certain rows, but I don’t even know where to start. Hence the question.
The first thing you will want to do is get some kind of backend to house the data so that AppGyver can access it. I believe the simplest way to do this would be to use Airtable and use their import tool to import the data straight from your Excel document. This process shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.
If you can get that far, then I would think we could start figuring out storing it on the device and searching it. One question I would have is: Do the users need to change the data? Or are they simply viewing it?
No changes by users. Just query.
I think your idea is very plausible then and not too difficult to implement the basic functionality you want. Would you be able to upload a sample (maybe like 100 rows?) of your data? If it isn’t anything that is sensitive in nature.
If you felt more comfortable using something like Google Sheets, you could most likely convert your spreadsheet to that and use it as well. Airtable does have a cap on their Free plan of 1200 records, but their cheapest paid plan should work for you as well.
It will be a consultation app for nursing professionals.
The excell list that I have contains 3,000 most common diseases with name, description and main actions to be taken related to the disease.
The user needs to have all 3 thousand records available in the application itself, recorded in some way that I still don’t know how it would be, to allow him to search for any of the diseases at any time.
The fact that I need the application to record the data on the device is that the queries will be made in the field, in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, without any possibility of internet available at certain times for even weeks.
So the format would be something like…
Column 1: Disease Name
Column 2: Description
Column 3: Main Actions
And these are all just regular text fields? And if there are multiple actions, do you list those all under one column?
You can definitely store the data on the device, but I would be a little concerned about performance with that many records. You would need to get a little crafty with how you viewed them even when limiting it with a search query.
The structure is something exactly like that.
Only text content. The required actions are part of a single cell like Column 3 you mentioned.
Therefore, for each illness, there is a description of it and the necessary actions. That simple…
…but not for me lol lol lol
I’ll need a couple days, but I can probably setup a simple demo on how I would accomplish this. It’s a very simple concept so I don’t think it will be too much trouble. I haven’t tried filtering that large of a dataset though, but hopefully it won’t be a problem. I assume that you would only want to search for the Disease Name and Description.
Exactly, and first of all my thanks for all your help.
Immense gratitude!
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@Leo_Sussuarana
Hey! I believe I’ve got a decent demo setup. Please let me know if it looks like what you are needing.
I used https://supabase.com/ to house the data. I created my database table using a CSV file (you should be able to convert Excel to CSV as long as you don’t have any complex data). The only change I made was adding an additional column called ‘searchstring’ which was a combination of the name and the description. I then connected that database to AppGyver via an API. I also created an On-device storage data source with the same columns.
When the app is first launched it will check to see if offline data exists. If not, it will fetch the data from the database and then loop over it to create the offline data. This actually only took a few seconds. Once we have the offline data I display it using a Recycler View and a Large List Item. You can search via the search box at the top of the page. This is done by filtering the repeat data on the Large List Item with the search string they type in. It supports looking for the name or description. Lastly you can click the Disease and view the Description and Actions on a separate page.
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My friend, immense gratitude for your contribution and for your enormous help.
I’ll take it easy this weekend, see and review everything you’ve done and written.
And I will make my attempts based on your suggestions.
I’ll report back here on what I can get.
GRATITUDE!
If you get stuck anywhere along the way just let me know. Supabase is free for the most part but your database will shutdown if it’s inactive for a week. I can go into more detail on any of the stuff I did.
Thanks and good luck!
Hola!! Quiero hacer algo similar!! un diccionario español / ingles fuera de linea offline…pudiste terminar tu proyecto? Saludos!
