SQL-Friendly 'Auto-Display-Name' Options

[GreenFlux]

AppSheet’s column naming rules aren’t nearly as strict as SQL databases, and will allow using reserved words, spaces, special characters, etc-

This speeds up development by eliminating the need for separate column names and display names in most cases. But if you ever need to connect to an SQL database, you’re back to SQL naming restrictions and still have to use the Display_Value setting to remove spaces and change casing- in every single field in every table.

That can be very time consuming in large apps, which tend to be the ones that need SQL databases.

This feature request is for a new ‘auto-format’ display setting, that will read SQL-friendly column names and display them with various options, similar to text formatting in a document:

But to apply this to column names, the options would be Y/N toggles for:

• Replace underscores with spaces
• Capitalize each word
• ALL CAPS
• ??? other options

Also, please allow a way to bulk-assign these settings to an entire table, instead of having to turn it on for each field.

That would give SQL users the same rapid-development advantage that the relaxed naming convention of AppSheet offers- but can not currently be used by SQL-connected apps.

[GreenFlux]

Perhaps this could be a setting at the Table-level, and it is the default display for all columns that don’t have a specific Display_Value for that column.

So the Priority would be to display each column name as:

1. Display_Value for that column, if it exists (over-rides all other values/names)
2. If not, use the table default- which could be:

• • the actual column name (if Table-level defaults have not been adjusted)
• • any combo of the Y/N casing and spacing options, to convert that table’s actual names