Google Place Details as external collection

[glamour_hammer]

Referencing recommendations from Adalo staff on previous topics Google place api returns results incorrectly and Get Google Place Images via API, I have set about trying to add Google Places as an external collection.

Structuring the request per Google’s documentation, I am able to get a response. Unfortunately, Adalo consistently returns “An error occurred when calling Get All” and that it “Could not find any results. Are you sure the Results Key is correct?” I’ve attached some screenshots. Consequently I am unable to create the collection.

Does anyone know how to fix this? I believe @Victor reported doing this successfully in the past. What’s the workaround?

Thanks in advance!

[Victor]

Hi @glamour_hammer,

You need to add two “Results Keys” for GET ALL request (step 2 of the external collection setup).
First key should be result, and second - photos.

Best,
Victor

[glamour_hammer]

Thank you @Victor . Using your recommended configuration I was able to get it working - had missed the “Results Keys” in the Google documentation initially. For the benefit of the community am attaching screenshots of the successful setup.

Now I’ve got Google Places added as an external collection and…I have no idea what to do next. The Adalo documentation is a bit lacking here. It simply states that “Now that you’ve got your External Collection set up, you can work with it just like the Standard Collections you’re used to. Lists, Actions, and Forms work with External Collections in the exact same way as data stored in Adalo.” However, in this case were simply talking about a collection of image attributes so how did you go about associating those with with a location in your Adalo collection?

Cheers,
Jordan

[Victor]

Hi @glamour_hammer,

Well, to answer the question “What to do next” you first need to answer the question “Why do you want to user Places API”

What is your use case in general?

Best,
Victor.

[glamour_hammer]

LOLs! Yeah - that’s usually a good place to start.

In this instance the user story is as follows:

1. User searches for a business (bike shops in the context of this app). Here I’m using the Google Place textsearch API to grab and store the basics such as place_id, name, address, etc. I’m also storing the photo_reference.
2. User can view shop details and elect to favorite the business. By favoriting the business the shop will appear in the user’s favorite shops list from which the user can tap into a shop details view.
3. The favorite shops list should include a shop thumbnail image and the shop details view could display additional images ideally from the Google Place external collection.

It’s step #3 where I am at a loss. I can’t simply point to an image in the shops collection, and even though I have the place_id and photo_reference I don’t see where/how to use those fields to point to the correct photo in the Google Place external collection.