PUSH data from one table to another

[MultiTech]

Hey Everyone.

With all of the amazing capabilities of AppSheet, it’s hard to find areas where there isn’t a work-around.

Like I always say… with AppSheet there’s

But sometimes, those work-arounds just won’t work in certain situations.

I have found myself in one of those situations. I COULD devise a system that would solve this, but this has brought to light a core functionality that we are missing with AppSheet.

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We need the ability to PUSH data from one table to another.

With the current capabilities, we can slice & dice data in the following ways:

1. We can create an action to set the value of a column
   • this is a pull only system
2. We can create a new record in a different table using values from the current table
   • This is a way to push the data into a new table, but only with a new record.

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But if we want to push data into a preexisting record - we can’t do that.

The best we can come up with currently, is to flag the item you’re wanting to push data from - isolate it out with a slice, then use a dedicated action to pull data from that special slice.

Again… pull only.

If we had a way to push data into a preexisting record - we wouldn’t need all that overhead. (Along with all the unnecessary back-and-form with the servers, which can cause problems if people are concurrently editing the same record trying to set a flag.)

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I know this has been requested before, but I wanted to bring it to light again - as each time I encounter this problem, which is rare to be fare, I always come to the same conclusion: an action system would solve this problem.

This would round out the data manipulation methods you would ever need to do whatever with your data. Literally the last thing on the list here. (^_^)

As always, thanks for considering!

[MultiTech]

Ultimately the functionality I’m trying to create/solve in my AppSheet app is the following:

When someone taps on a row, that row’s key is pushed into the user table - denoting where that person is.

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The only way to do that right now is to flag the item the user is tapping on, then doing that whole slice isolating things.

Attempt #1: Trying to use the

Since if you upload a CSV into your app, and if there are records that share a common Key value already in the table, AppSheet will simply use that upload as an “update” upload - I was hoping I might get away with using this.

I tried specifying the same ID as the one stored in the Current_User[UserID] slice.

But when I try and execute this action, nothing happens. Not an error about a record already having that ID, not an update in the value in the sheet… nothing.

The app just sort of… flashes once; which tells me something is happening, just not what I was hoping for.

[Steve]

If I recall correctly, I have been able to get Data: add a row to another table using values from this row to successfully overwrite an existing row. The device-local table will contain two rows with the same key–the old row and the new–until a sync occurs, then the original will disappear. You’ll have to work around this temporary duplicate key in your slice by also checking [_ROWNUMBER]. Also keep in mind that the new row doesn’t automatically inherit the existing row’s column values: you have to manually replicate any you want to keep.

[MultiTech]

Hmmm… I"m not seeing that behavior - I wish!

The app doesn’t register an update when the action runs, and when watching the sheet like a hawk I didn’t notice anything happening.

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When the CSV thing came out, and everyone was confirming that it did indeed work to update already present rows, I was hoping this would work in the same manner.

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@Steve do you know, is the action type I tried to use above SUPPOSED TO support this functionality? Is this a bug, or is this wishful thinking?

[Grant_Stead]

different, but in line with this, is that i wish the native API could choose another table, right now you can only choose the table that the workflow is triggered from…

[WillowMobileSys]

Totally agree this is needed. Just about every app I have built so far needs this in some way.

Yes you are right this has been requested a number of times. Just for fun, below is a link to highest voted feature currently on the list with 64 votes. The second highest has 47.

Action: UPDATE EXISTING ROW(s) using values from this row Feature Requests

This feature request is for a new Action-type that would replace the need for several actions to accomplish the same task: Update a set of rows using values from this row Currently we can: Add a NEW row to another table using values from this row, and Execute an action on a set of rows But to pass values from the current row to a set of existing rows requires a bit more setup. This could easily be defined in a single action and could use the same UI as the existing actions: [Scree…

[MultiTech]

[Steve]

MultiTech_Visions:

is the action type I tried to use above SUPPOSED TO support this functionality?

Absolutely no idea whether its supposed to or not.