Add a Simple FOR LOOP condition to allow for Repeating a Sequence of Actions like Multiple Rows in another Table and more!

[aucforum]

Continuing the discussion from Add multiple rows into a another table:

I could also make a proposal that the action: “Grouped: executive a sequence of actions” could be simply expanded to be a loop by having an additional expression for us developers to state what the condition of that FOR LOOP would be. It would allow for iteration, repeating a Sequence of Actions like ‘Multiple Rows in another Table’ and more!

You already have the logic that is scoped to constrain some conditions to particular purposes, like “Valid If”, “Initial Value”, “Show If”, etc.

(Perhaps on the backend you might define a hard limit, e.g. 100000 loop cycles max to avoid any potential infinite loop occurring.)

This is simple and would avoid such a complicated (and unnecessary) work around, like APIs, Webhooks, etc.

How about it back end developers? Can you implement it soon please?

[Riazsg]

Hi colin

 Thanks for supporting the idea. I see urgent need for this feature. I cannot proceed without it with my app I am working on.

[aucforum]

Riazsg:

dea. I see urgent need for this feature. I cannot proceed without it with my app I am working on.

Aesthetics like Color picker/selection, a new skin for the Development Environment and other unnamed upcoming UX improvements seem to have high priority.

[Jonathan_S]

What kind of feature are you working on? Im sure it is possible.

[BenBl]

This does seem like a bit of a no brainer.

8 months later:
Working on a scheduling problem, I have tasks that take arbitrary amounts of time. I want to create multiple time blocks to work on them with a maximum time of 2 hours a piece. I’m still considering a) api hacks b) Steve’s recursive actions c) creating a table with rows ranging from 1 to the maximum number of minutes I’d ever use.

[Ferret]

a) api hacks b) Steve’s recursive actions c) creating a table with rows ranging from 1 to the maximum number of minutes I’d ever use.

I’m in a similar situation. I started using Appsheet in December and realized quickly that adding X number of rows via actions or workflows would be tricky. Its April now and I’m sad to say that the new Automation system doesnt help me solve this problem any. I again find myself trying to hypothesize into the future as to which of the A B C choices you mentioned is ideal for another usage.

[elco]

Who decided to create a new GUI “programming” framework and chose not to include a for-loop. It is literally the second most important thing after the if-condition.

This would help everyone. Rather than every single new AppSheet developer having to scour the forum to find a hack (or like they prefer “trick”) to do a simple for-loop. These solutions aren’t even generic and don’t work for all use cases.

Literally every single one of us here has wasted time on this “problem”.

This was a conscious decision, I really wonder what the conversion in that board room looked like. Probably has something to a with for-loop can be very costly as developers won’t care about optimisation and this will significantly increase the API use and backend use hence the cost/profit from each app.

[Former Community Member]

We are working on implementing a for-loop construct in AppSheet, plan to release it in Q3. Will post on the community as we get closer. Appreciate everyone’s patience.

[Koichi_Tsuji]

Is it possible that one BOT (called BOT A) would call itself (through call a process step, then call BOT A i.e. myself?) and trigger the task in continuous way? until the condition for the Event trigger does not match?

Just I was curious how you would achieve this challenge.

[Former Community Member]

A bot cannot call other bots (just like workflows), it can however call other processes using the “Call process” step. We are working on an enhancement that will allow bots (eg: bot A) to trigger other bots (eg: bot B) that are listening for a data change event (eg: changes to Order table) assuming bot A had a data change action that made changes to the Order table.

[M_T_Amjad]

New automation is helpful in creating multiple record on daily basis as required for the day.
Very helpful in my scenario.

A event is created daily if it’s start and end date condition is met. No need to create every event record before time.

[solar]

Just wondering if there is an update on this since we’re getting towards the end of Q3. Will this be implemented as a simple for loop in the Process tab that can repeatedly call a Task?

[aucforum]

“Christmas is coming…”

Wow… I requested this 18 months ago…

[Ferret]

In the last year, I have made 13 apps that are currently in production. Of those, only 3 have no need for a loop. While using recursive actions is my preferred method, it is still without limitations and varying behavior when performed server-side and requires a lot of pre-planning to make sure its limitations will not be game-breaking in regards to the rest of the app's logic, not to mention the hour or two it takes me to make and test one.

A revised update on when we can hope to have this much-needed feature would be highly appreciated.

[JPAlpano]

Wow.  Feature is still not implemented.