App clean up

[Mike_Rundell]

When building a large app I have found that you often have unused format rules, slices, views, tables that were created during the apps development. The question is, is there an easy way to see if these redundant items are used within the app before deleting them ? If not this would be a handy tool to clean up the app to improve performance.

[Kirk_Masden]

This might be an idea to post in the feature request section. I also have a large app and the size and complexity have made editing complicated. I wish the interface were “smarter” and could help me check for the kind of issue you mention.

Personally, I would like to see the kind of “smarts” that the Google spreadsheet interface has. There, if I change the name of a sheet, all of the formulas in other tables get changed automatically. The last time I checked that wasn’t the case with the AppSheet editor. If I change a table name or a UX name, I’ll need to fix a lot of errors by hand.

Also, with large apps, I’d like to see ordering options. Some parts of the interface seem to be in alphabetical order while others are in the order that things were added. When an app gets big, this is all quite unwieldy.

[Aleksi]

I changed the catgory to “Feature Requests”. I agree, it could be a reasonable feature.

[Mike_Rundell]

Thanks Aleksi I agree it would be extremely useful as a clean up before deployment. Keep me posted on developments.

[Mike_A]

I agree with these comments. I am currently struggling to fix an app I broke when I tried to normalize the tables and align sheet and key names. If you get it right in the beginning (before records are even added) it saves a lot of work. Without more specific error messages, better entity reporting, and “auto” renaming, it can be tough to fix a complex solution when it’s live.

[Kirk_Masden]

I just had to change a table name and found it to be much easier than I expected. I had quite a few slices based on that table and they were all changed automatically. There were several “expressions” that I had to fix by hand but the whole repair process took much less time than I expected it would. I’d like to thank anyone at AppSheet who may have been involved in improving this aspect of the editor.

Of course, it will be even better if the editor can make all such adjustments, including expressions, automatically. Still, I was glad to see that the slices were all done for me.

Kirk_Masden:

I would like to see the kind of “smarts” that the Google spreadsheet interface has. There, if I change the name of a sheet, all of the formulas in other tables get changed automatically. The last time I checked that wasn’t the case with the AppSheet editor. If I change a table name or a UX name, I’ll need to fix a lot of errors by hand.

[Lynn]

@Kirk_Masden Yes, It is definitely getting better than the old days when if you changed something half your app would disappear and you would have to rebuild it all again.

[pravse]

We did some work to automate the table name change across expressions. Glad you noticed it! There is more to do though, as you observe.

[Kirk_Masden]

Hi @praveen! Here’s something similar (another aspect of the app editing interface) that should be even easier for someone on your team to fix:

Currently, if I try to adjust an app formula in a ref column, the column type gets changed to “text”. Moreover, this occurs “silently” (no alert message). Fixing this could help individual users to avoid a good deal of unnecessary confusion and frustration.

One more thing that happened today: I experimented with changing a deck view to a table view. I realized that, in this particular case, I’d like to stick with the deck view but when I chose deck view again, it had “forgotten” all of the previous settings. I was able to fix it in fairly short order but it would be great if the editor could “remember” the previous set up in situations like that.

[Kirk_Masden]

praveen:

automate the table name change across expressions

Hi @praveen! Today I changed the name of an action. That action was invoked in another group action, and the name change didn’t cause a problem there. However, the name change caused the action to be dropped from the slice. It wasn’t difficult for me to go into the slice and add it (I got a notification that I needed to do so) but it would be great if the platform could take care of this sort of thing automatically when the user changes a name.

Also, when I changed the name of a column on a table and hit regenerate, I needed to fix lots of expressions. If that could be automated, it would save a good deal of time when changes need to be made.

[Gaius]

Has there been any movement on this feature request? Specifically, a data cleanup that removes unused slices, format rules, etc.

[SkrOYC]

Seems like a good feature.
I would also like to see any slices, format rules, views and even VC that are not being used/referenced anywhere.
But I have to admit that this might be a little bit hard to make since the expression assistant would need to be smart enough to give some data about this cases.
I think we will see a major upgrade to the expression assistant before we get the feature mentioned in the OP

[Steve]

Gaius:

Has there been any movement on this feature request?

Nope.