Is there no show and hide toggle that doesn't require writing data?

[Kirk_Masden]

In this forum we can toggle between show and hide as shown below. Is it possible to do this in AppSheet without creating an action that writes data to the web each time the user wants to show or hide something?

If, as I suspect, this is not possible, I’d like to put it on my wish list. Personally, I’d like to use it inside a detail view.

[Aleksi]

What would you like to hide? Field(s)?

[Kirk_Masden]

Yes. I would like the user to be able to show (temporarily) hidden fields by tapping on something. I think I could do this with an action (by writing something to the data) but it would be nice to have a toggle that does not depend on writing to the sheet.

In my app I am currently accomplishing the same sort of task with a link that navigates from a detail view with some records hidden to another detail view showing those records. It would be nice, though, to have a toggle that could be used within a detail view.

[Aleksi]

Gotcha. I do agree… sometimes it could be usefull functionality.

[GreenFlux]

I’ve used the USERSETTINGS() as a show/hide condition before, but the user has to leave the current view to edit settings. If only we could only set values in the USERSETTINGS() with an action.

[Kirk_Masden]

@Aleksi, @GreenFlux: Thanks for your responses. I think I’ll use the “edit” function to “show” the records that I wanted to put in a hide/show toggle. It’s not an elegant solution but is much easier to implement than other approaches I have considered.

[QREW_Cam]

That would be nice to have a Virtual Boolean toggle that doesn’t require saving data!

[Fabian_Weller]

I also would Love this. For now I use the same method: An Action that leads to another detail view with more information. But with this you have to care about 2 detail views. One with less info and one with more info. If you change one you have to remember to change also the second.

[QREW_Cam]

Yeah one of the apps I’m working on I’ve paginated my detail view with an enum dropdown with options like
-General Info
-Work Order Info
-Assignments
and it only shows columns related to the selected category.

And then on a different part of the app have separate detail views with action buttons to navigate between them. One for Quote fields and one for Calculations/Pricing totals fields

Think it’s such a great way to polish up the UX/UI of an app that it should have a standard way of doing it instead of Jerry-Rigging.

[Kirk_Masden]

Thanks @QREW_Cam! Could you please share some screenshots of how the paginated detail view works with those enum dropdowns. I might want to imitate what you’ve done but I’m having trouble imagining how to do it.

[QREW_Cam]

I use an enum drop down that has predetermined options(could tweak the ‘show if’ to use EnumList).
I add a show if expression that shows only the columns that are associated with that enum’s value.

 OR(
(NOT(CONTEXT("View")="Work Orders_Detail")),
(AND(CONTEXT("View")="Work Orders_Detail",[ShowGroups]="Work Order Info"))
) 

[Kirk_Masden]

Now that I’ve confirmed that we don’t exactly have a capability like this and that others would like to have it, I posted a feature request about it:

Show/hide toggle Feature Requests

I posed a general question about whether or not we have the capability to toggle between show and hide in a detail view (or perhaps another sort of view) without writing to a table in order to do so: https://community.appsheet.com/t/is-there-no-show-and-hide-toggle-that-doesnt-require-writing-data/1... It seems that the answer is currently “no” but that several other people would like to have the capability. So, I thought I would repost this as feature request.

[Kirk_Masden]

Thanks very much! Nicely done!!!

[QREW_Cam]

Thank you! This Table had 70+ columns so on a detail view it proved to be very helpful.

[Kirk_Masden]

Good point. The ability to toggle between hide and view is particularly important when the number of columns is large.

[QREW_Cam]

Page Header Show Columns being usable on Detail views the same way they are on Forms would just about eliminate this issue

[Kirk_Masden]

Interesting. I hadn’t thought of that.

By the way, in thinking about tables with lots of columns, it occurred to me that “collapse / expand” might be more evocative. App creators might want to make a “collapsed” view the default so that users could see the forest before looking at the trees and then expand the view to see more details.

In this sense, the ability to link to other points within a detail view (as one can do in html) would also be nice to have.