Accessing Airtable formula field as an image

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1

Hi Community.

I have an attachment field in Airtable that stores an image file.
If I bind it to my Softr list details block content element of the type image, it works great.

However, I have a requirement to either display or not display this image conditionally, based on another Airtable field (checkbox). So, I’ve created another formula field that has an if statement in it that evaluates the presence of check in the checkbox field and only when it’s present responds with the content of the attachment field. The formula looks like this:

IF({Generate Word Cloud Image}=1, {Word Cloud Image}, “”)

The result of the formula in Airtable looks like this:

new_wordcloud.png (https://dl.airtable.com/.directUploadAttachment//new_wordcloud.png)

Great!

However, when I bind it to my Softr list details block content element of the type image, it doesn’t work. I suspect Softr cannot handle the Airtable API call in a way that would retrieve the content of the formula field as an image, if it’s a reference to an image, not the actual attachment field with an image file in it.

Is there any workaround I can use, other than creating another clone of this entire block and have one or the other block display conditionally, tied to a user group that would check the presence or absence of the check in the checkbox, with one block showing the attachment field contents and the other not showing it.

In other words, I’d love to handle this more at the element level, not at the block visibility level.

Thanks

2

Hi there, this is a tough one! Could you potentially look into using the “embed” option for the field type and try to embed the picture in the block that way?

3

Hi @Jjenglert .

No, neither embed nor rich text data type won’t work because the html tag would have to reference the Airtable file’s URL, which is not directly accessible; only via an API. I think it’s an Airtable security thing.

Softr’s image data type would be the only bet, as it accesses Airtable via the API, but it doesn’t seem to interpret Airtable’s formula field output, if it outputs another Airtable field that is actually an image.

I am not saying it’s a Softr issue. It’s probably more of an Airtable issue - ideally a formula field should output an image if the if statement resolves to another image field, but it doesn’t. It resolves to a reference to an image and Softr doesn’t understand that.

Boris

4

@bbelo what if you manipulate via formula and keep only the link ? then it will work… you can

Something like this

MID(
  {Input Field},
  FIND("https", {Input Field}),
  LEN({Input Field}) - FIND("https", {Input Field}) + 1
)
5

Thanks @artur , but unfortunately this doesn’t work because the png URL is not usable as a discrete URL, even if I parse it out using your formula above. It can only be used via the Airtable API.
Again, I think this is an Airtable issue, not a Softr issue.

From the Softr perspective, the only thing that would lessen the pain in this case would have been if conditional visibility was available on the individual item fields in dynamic list and list detail blocks, not just on the entire blocks.

If it was, I would then just conditionally show the field in the same block, not having two identical blocks with two different visibility rules, one showing the image field and the other not showing it.

Thanks!

6

Out of curiosity what’s the outcome of the formula ?
Can you share the INPUT | Formula | OUTPUT ?

7

formula:

MID(
  IF({Generate Word Cloud Image}=1,{Word Cloud Image},""),
  FIND("https", IF({Generate Word Cloud Image}=1,{Word Cloud Image},"")),
  LEN(IF({Generate Word Cloud Image}=1,{Word Cloud Image},"")) - FIND("https", IF({Generate Word Cloud Image}=1,{Word Cloud Image},""))
)

as you recommended.

I’ll direct-message the output of the formula.