Thank you for this feedback and insight here. I’ll take a look at this and make some edits to the doc!
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Thanks, @pford !
Am I understanding that I can’t create an Airtable record with a DateTime field in it? That can’t possibly be true, can it? That’s not in the docs. And it’s such a standard data type that I can’t believe it’s not handled. And yet that’s what I’m seeing on my first attempt to use the form component. It’s an absolute necessity in an app that is used to create event information. Is there some other way of entering a date and time in the standard form? Or do I have to jump through a bunch of hoops by using custom API? Is there some other workaround?
Any ideas are welcome! Thanks in advance for any assistance…
@MichiganMan , not sure, maybe Adalo aalready changed something here but at least when I was building an app that had a backend based on AirTable it was not working.
My experience shows that fully relying on AirTable as the database/backend while building frontend on Adalo doesn’t work (it’s too complex, too slow, too many reliability and other issues you’ll face).
Therefore, my suggestion is to build Adalo apps on Adalo databases primarily and use AIrTable external collections only for specific cases (a blend of Adalo & External collections appeared to be working best for me).
You can also easily and reliably integrate Adalo with AirTable with Integromat (then there should be no issue creating records on AT).
You can use integromat (rebranded to https://www.make.com/en/register?pc=bhanuv3 now) to send dates to Airtable.
Vykintas… Thanks so much for the quick reply. I saw your previous post but was hoping that something had been worked on in the previous five months. But obviously not. I will explore taking the hybrid approach, as some of my app REQUIRES content to be held in an external database. Another option, for me, is to code up my own database API, handle my own SQL Server database, and take full control over that side of things. I was hoping Airtable could at least get me to an MVP, but hopefully the hybrid approach can at least get me there. Cheers…
Bhanu… Thanks so much for that reply. I’m not using Integromat, but maybe I can find some other workaround to make that happen directly from Adalo. I may try separating the date/time away from my other form fields, make it a two-step process, and see if I can update using the API in a custom action or something. Ugly, but might be at least a temporary solution. So I really appreciate getting that formatting tip from you! Cheers…
Next attempts… I removed all ‘other’ types of fields, leaving only single line text fields. I try to create a new Airtable record. Nope. Nothing happens. I see that others seem to have similar issues before, but I can’t believe that the standard Form component can’t create a basic Airtable record. Is this possibly true at this point? Or am I just flat-out missing something (which is always possible, of course)? I’m reading Airtable bases, filtering external collections, doing all kinds of other Airtable work successfully. But if I can’t create a record, it’s a non-starter, obviously. Do I have to go to a custom action and deal with the entire API stuff in this case? If that’s the workaround, OK. Not cool, but OK.
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