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I am new to Google App maker and I don't have a lot of experience with coding either (sorry :/). Since App maker is marked as low-coding app builder tool, I assumed it was not that hard to make a very simple app with it. However, for me it is.

I need to make a simple app for demonstrations purposes only (so Cloud SQL and other complex database solutions are not in my interest here). I want to make it using calculated models (correct me if I am wrong, calculated models are just temporary solutions, since apps need to have like real databases to be fully functional?).

My app is basically made of 2 datas: 1) Employees and 2) Departments

-> Fields for "Employees" are: First name, Last name and Department.

-> Field for "Departments" is just Department name.

My app is supposed to look like this:

1st page: Table with current employees that has a button to add new employee,

2st page: Table with all department names (e.g. marketing, finance...) that has a button to add new department name,

3rd page: Form that opens when I click on add new employee button in which I can insert their first name, last name and from drop down menu choose department,

4th page: Form that opens when I click on add new department button in which I can insert new department name.

5th page: Form (or some other widget, not sure here) that has option to insert first and last name in order to find out what department that employee is assigned to.

I tried to make first 4 pages, but I end up with forms that I cannot insert anything into them. 5th page is still too much for me.

I hope you understand my struggles and if you know how to do it please share your knowledge. Thank you very much!

Jason Aller
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Del Pro
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2 Answers2

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Calculated models are kind of like SQL views - they are not necessarily for temporary solutions. Every time you load a calculated model the script you write under that model's datasource is ran. That script usually loads data from an external source (I.e. grabbing stock prices from an API, loading data from an external SQL server, or generating random placeholder data).

You could use the cloud SQL models for this application that you are building - your table with all department names that is supposed to be displayed in the second page could just be a cloud SQL table with one single field for a department name.

I suggest you work through the example apps so you can get a better understanding of how the different components work. Here is a link to one for you to get started.

In short, you're going to create a few models to store information (I suggest using cloud SQL as the calculated models will require code whereas cloud SQL is more plug and play through app maker's bindings). Before you create any pages try to lay out how your databases will look as that will dictate how you set bindings or program your scripts.

Asking to completely make what is essentially a combination of the tutorials already provided by Google is pretty counter intuitive - you should ask more specific questions in regards to implementation.

As for App Maker being a low-code environment, that's only partially true. For very, very simple apps (think glorified forms) you will need only a couple lines of code and can probably do everything through drag-and-drop. However, anything more complicated than a simple form will almost certainly require a good chunk of actual code. There are plenty of resources online to learn Javascript.

Rherma
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You might want to try a google partner like AppSynergy for building stuff like this. It might be overkil for what you need (or maybe not if you intend to build a lot more stuff).

Robert D
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