Reports as the starting point for editing records

[Billp]

In a typical database application custom written in C# or other coding languages the form that is used for data entry is typically also the form used for editing records.  I've been using the Caspio way of creating a form for data entry "create" and then a report to lookup records for editing (Read, Update, Delete) but it seems odd to me.  It also means the user interface is not really consistent with how years of writing programs has made me think.  CRUD tasks work together when users are adding and updating or deleting records and generally doing data manipulation tasks.  Reports are for taking that data and pulling it together into something that helps with knowledge.  I feel like it's two different mindset's.  Has anyone else felt this way and if so are there ways to make the transition from creating records to modifying or deleting records less disconnected?

[vidierre]

Hi @Billp, welcome into the lowcode world. My opinion is tha you cannot make a parallel between low-code terms and classical coding environments. Reports in CASPIO are an element that is very far from classical reports even if they share the same name.

I consider CASPIO Reports like a Rubik cube, where colors represents some functional areas like authentication, filters, data representation, tasks, data updating, data validation, ecc.
Like colors you don't have all their nuances but only some basic variations. And like the Rubik cube you can combine them in a lot of ways making very easy to get a quick, but feasable, result.

I am not a big fan in comparing old-way and new-way, rather I prefer to analize what is still missing in CASPIO to make it a unavoidable forced choice.

My opinion is that it has to go a long way on Roles, Business Logic and Documentation.
Roles - even if they write there are roles, there aren't. Documentation, samples and video show only some workaround to handle the missing roles. These can lead to a proliferation of datapages and a real duplication of entire part of application
Business Logic - Triggers and Tasks are a very useful tool, but they have many limitatios that lead me to use other platforms to realize them. (i.e. you can use list-type fields into tables, but you can use them into triggers, tasks or import activities) 
Documentation - Visual building and panels in datapages are very useful to speed the development, but are a nightmare if you have to change something you meade months ago. Basically you nedd to reverse engeenering your app.

But remeber I believe that these are improvement areas and not cons for a platform that fit 80-90% of the scenarios of my clients. The remainig 10-20% have a complexity not affordable to low-code.

[Billp]

@vidierreThanks for the great description.  It confirms a lot of what i am finding.  Do you do Javascript workarounds?  I am working on a Javascript eventlistener to change field values in time and date fields to UTC time for storage then back again using the javascript getutcoffset function.  My problem is I need to debug my code by stepping through it and I can't even find it in sources tab when I preview or run the code.  I've tried runing the URL deployment string in the browser and going to developer tools in Chrome and Edge to no avail.  Any ideas how I can get to where I can run the datapage and set breakpoints and watch values?

  

[vidierre]

@BillpTo be honest I am a self.made javascript programmer and what I do is to play with Inspect from Chrome. Sometimes insert some alert() into JS code helps me.
To let you understand I stull have this https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_debugging.asp as debug strting point (I know is quite for newbies...)
I think you can find more googleing or into other forums like https://stackoverflow.com/ or https://www.codeproject.com

[Billp]

Thanks.  I am a programmer with alot of desktop experience but transitioned into project management about the time the browser programming became so prevalent that desktop programs became few and far between.  I have just now come to a time when I want to jump back into more coding so am learning new languages and methods.  I certainly can inject console.log and alert() and other commands into the code to get what I want it is just alot more tedious than being able to run the code line by line.  I think maybe I'll build a quick form outside of caspio which mimics the controls that I think caspio is using and then run my code in there where I know I can use the terrific  debugging tools like breakpoints.  Then I should be able to copy the debugged code back into the caspio form and have it work.  I do have a ticket open with caspio to see if they can figure out why I can't see my code.   Here is  a link to setting breakpoints which, if I can get my code to show up in sources, will allow me to do what I do with other javascript.  I promise to come back here and let you know if I get a solution to the code invisible problem.

Pause your code with breakpoints - Chrome Developers

 

[Billp]

Well maybe I was doing the dev tools in this order before and just didn't notice it but.....when I open the dev tools before I put the web page URL in the address bar and enter the code shows up.