Extract specific row from spreadsheet

Questions about Thunkable
1

I am just getting started with Thunkable, and am having trouble finding some tutorials on a blocker I have. I am pull data from an Airtable spreadsheet. As my first few steps I am trying to figure out how to search the rows and only display specific row. The second step will be then to display only data from specific fields on the row.

I can get to the point where I can see the JSON output!

Screenshot 2020-01-27 at 9.00.42 PM|396x193

This gives me the JSON dump, but I can’t figure out how to only display a specific row. I tried the below, but I just get Undefined.

Screenshot 2020-01-27 at 9.02.28 PM

As a simple example, let say I have 3 columns - First Name, Last Name, Phone. What I am trying to learn is the following:

  1. I want to display the row that has the last name of Benson.
  2. Make the the data look normal and not in JSON format
  3. Then take the next step where I show only the row of Benson, but only include the fields that are First Name and Last Name.

I think with these examples, I’ll be able to figure out everything I am trying to do.

Thanks for any help.

2

I made a demo that shows how to search for a specific row (cell, really) within a specific column:

https://x.thunkable.com/copy/75e46fe9ef167977d555aaa90f5704d9

You can set the searchTerm to a text string and then search for it and instead of deleting the found row, you can display contents from it.

1 Like
3

This worked great, thank you. Now I am needing to figure out how do I display the JSON data properly - remove the { and ". I can’t quite find a tutorial that walks through that well.

4

parsing JSON can be difficult at first. both @actech and @darren have public projects on here to demonstrate that. @darren has at least 1 video on youtube about this also!

good luck!

5

Is there a reason you need to parse the JSON data? When I use Airtable, I stick to the Spreadsheet blocks and I’m able to extract the information I need. Then again, my cell values are pretty straightforward: name, photo, etc.

6

That’s a good point. Now that I have a better idea for how to find a specific cell I need, that may be the route I go as they are fairly straightforward as well. I tried following a few tutorials, but all I can find are ones for the Web API where the data is already in JSON, so the block of “get object from JSON” is used. From my understanding, data from the spreadsheet is already in object. So I then go through loop as documented as I extract the property from the object, but can’t get any output.

I’ll shift gears to your suggestion and see if just using the specific cell will accomplish what I am after.

7

Yep, I would avoid using JSON for Spreadsheet data. You should be able to read everything you need using the spreadsheet commands in Thunkable X.

The only downside of using spreadsheet blocks is that they are somewhat slow. Each call to Airtable takes some time so if you are doing a ton of calls, you may notice the delay.

8

I misread the post. I thought this was in reference to firebase data. I’ve been working with that all day and i must’ve gotten confused.

You’re right though. When I am app testing my data submission app, i will notice some slowdown when I am frequently submitting and resubmitting back to back. (which is why i want to learn how to work with firebase)