Images changed encoding to base64

Ekaterina_Ponkr · 11-10-2020 03:15 AM

Hi guys,
All of a sudden, all image url got encoded as base64 which (1) make them unreadable and unmatchable to Google sheets and (2) make the app slow. Have you experienced it? How can we resolve it?

Thanks,
Eka

GreenFlux

Can you post a screen shot please? Is the URL string being changed on existing rows in your old data? Or only on new rows as they are saved?

Ekaterina_Ponkr

Thank you for the response! Previously, the values were saved as normal human-readable - see the first row while nowadays everything is saved in base64. No changes were done but I was told by the team that Appsheet changed how it saves the images, so I wondered if it is true.

GreenFlux

@Ekaterina_Ponkratova, where are these images being saved from? Are they taken on a mobile device and uploaded via the AppSheet mobile app?

@Aleksi, do you know anything about a change to how images stored?

Ekaterina_Ponkr

The images are loaded from the app front-end - Appsheet and saved in a google driver folder. The data is saved in a mysql database.

Steve

Please post a screenshot of the app’s column configuration.

Ekaterina_Ponkr

Thank you, Steve, for the response:

Steve

The app’s column configuration, please.

Ekaterina_Ponkr

Ekaterina_Ponkr

Steve

Thanks for the screenshots! I see nothing wrong with them.

The behavior you’re experiencing is definitely odd–I have no explanation for it. I’m going to have to refer you to support@appsheet.com for further help here.

Please let us know here what the problem turns out to be!

Ekaterina_Ponkr

Thank you, Steve. That’s precisely I find weird as nothing was changed.

Adam-google

This indicates we were unable to save the image to a file in your file storage, saving the data to the sheet instead is a fallback behavior to try to avoid losing the image. If the row is edited again it should cause the system to retry to save the image.

Most of the time the reason for failure to save the file is insufficient space in Google Drive, if you see this happening that would be the first thing to check.

We’re considering whether to handle this differently since it’s unexpected and confusing to see the image data show up in the cell. And if we detect insufficient drive space we should communicate that back to the app owner.

Ekaterina_Ponkr

Hi Adam,

Thank you for the response! I am confirming with the Driver owner because the storage is like 20% full but it is unclear if at the moment of failure, there was a storage issue. Let’s assume that the storage size was increased and now all the images are saved as jpg not as base64. How should we handle those that came out as base64? Re-submit them?

Warm regards,
Eka

Martina_Hawkins

Hi @Adam-google , I am having a similar issue with saving to OneDrive. Storage is not an issue.

images are being saved to SQL Database like this. They show in the App but are not saved to OneDrive