Public & private databases + browser plugins

Hi team!

I am building an app that is a database of productivity tips that answers questions via gpt.

initial demo here - https://twitter.com/thomoliverz/status/1663624560908939270?s=20

i have 2 questions about possible functionality

  1. can we enable users to have their own private database e.g. they can add their own records and filter by those records?

  2. do we have a browser plugin for a softr form? so that people could paste text from webpage and send it to my softr form?

thank you for any help

Hey, thanks for sharing your app with us :heart: Regarding the 1st point, you can enable action buttons in your app so that the users can add their own records to a table/list block and filter the data based on their added records. Also, you should use conditional filters to allow the logged-in users to see their added records only.

Regarding the plugin, I am not aware of any such plugins, but let’s see what the community will advise.

Ok thank you @Marine.Hovhannisyan - very helpful. Just some further clarifications…

1/ So they could theoretically choose to view either 1) the public database or 2) their private database (only records they have added)?

2/ When they add a record, does it get added to my airtable base with some associated value to show that they added it i.e. their email?

Because my app works such that I load data from airtable and use that to generate a response - currently all the records. But I want to add a feature where a user could choose to see a response only based on their records.

So if the user-added record goes into my airtable base, with their email somewhere in the base, I can make a system to load a response based only their data.

Thank you for any further help.

Hey @thomasoliver, you are always welcome!

  1. If you consider block content as a database, then, yes, your users can see the block content that belongs to them and/or the public content. This should be decided by you, as the website admin when building your use case.

  2. When a user adds a record to the dynamic block, it gets added to the data source you, as the website admin, linked to that block. If you need to know who added the records, then, you will need to configure hidden fields to collect the logged-in user emails who added new records.

All in all, you definitely can have a table/list block for each of your users to show them their own records by using conditional filters (as I mentioned above).

@Marine.Hovhannisyan - thanks again for your help finding a solution.

I have almost implemented but think there is an issue.

So I created a new list with an add record button. This has a hidden field that collects user email and maps it to data source. This seems to work - see screenshot from the airtable data source.

I then added a conditional filter on the list to show only records where user = the logged in user’s email.

But I am getting no results when I test…?

Do you know why?

Seems like there are 4 different options for a user email so I’m a bit confused!

Thank you!


image

Also @Marine.Hovhannisyan is the logged in email correctly logging in airtable? I am assuming it is written as shown in order to protect the privacy. But perhaps this is the issue…?

Hi @Marine.Hovhannisyan - I also tried this with username and not working.

Is this something I’m doing or a bug?

@Marine.Hovhannisyan apologies to pester you.

I’ve now made this work. I think the issue was that I wasn’t logging in correctly via the sign up form (perhaps related to a separate bug).

The issue now is that I’d ideally like users to be able to submit a record, and to create their own inline filters. For example, my use case is that users should be able to add their own quotes, as well as who said them, and their theme. So they should fill in person/ theme, and that then becomes an inline filter.

I currently don’t think that’s possible? They can either select from a dropdown that is linked to source, but can’t add to it.

Is that right?

Grateful for help as always.

Haven’t analyze your problem thoroughly, but at first glance:

  • Add a second condition where the column of the record to be shown is checked against the user’s e-mail
  • set “Show list items that match ALL (instead of ANY)

thanks so much. but my issue is no longer allowing public vs private database.

now my issue is that although users can indeed add their own records and they can view only the records that they have viewed…

when they add a record, the filters that they use are not auto updated. e.g. a user might add a quote by Elon Musk. so they add the quote, the source, the URL etc. but then when they go through the records they don’t see quotes by elon musk because the filters are not updated.

do you see the issue?

@Marine.Hovhannisyan grateful for any help and apologies again for asking for your support!