Randomly select a single list

Questions about Thunkable
1

I want to create an app that inspires writing by taking a single word, randomly selected from all the possible list names in datasources, and listing words that are similar (i.e. listing the words in that list).

For example, a writer wants to write a scene about some topic for practice but doesn’t know what to write about. They might press a button which would randomly select one of the hundreds of possible list names from datasources – let’s say the word “winter” was selected – then see the associated words to help describe it (“snow”, “white”, “cold”, “lonely”,“gentle”, etc), and then describe the scene using these extra ideas.

I just began using Thunkable recently so I don’t know much about it.

These are my thoughts so far:

  1. The datasource (with words and their associated words) will be in an google sheets table (because that’s the only one I’m familiar with right now) with all the list names on the first row and the data in vertical columns below each name. Then I will be able to hold hundreds of lists in the same file.

What I have successfully done so far:

  1. I have successfully imported a datasource and verified that all the correct list names and list values are there.
  2. I have created a button which will make the listview visible, allow the user to select a value from a list, after which the listview will become invisible again and the button text will be replaced with the selected list item (e.g. I press the button, select “one” from the list view, and the button now says “one”).
  3. I have found a way to randomly select a value from a specific list using the randomnumber function with row id.

My difficulties so far:

  1. Although I have successfully gotten data from a list, the list was preselected before I tested the app. I could only program it to show data from a single list which was specified by name beforehand. This is very limited because I want the button to randomly select a single list out of many and THEN get the corresponding list values to that list.
  2. I don’t understand the other types of datasources well enough to determine if this would be possible with them instead of google sheets (i.e. will airtable or excel allow me to do something different?).

If anything in this explanation doesn’t make sense, please tell me.

Also, if this isn’t possible in Thunkable, please tell me now before I waste too much time and effort.

Thanks.

3

@jaredsbror5 creating multiple posts does not help with getting help.
Please have patience ti’ll someone replies to your original topic.
This will help keeping the community clean and makes it easier for users to find a topic.

@thunkable_staff please merge this topic or close it.
Thanks

4

I’m going to close this for now since it was created later than this topic:

Edit:

I’m sorry, they are different topics and I skimmed them and assumed you were reposting. I’ve re-opened this topic.

In the future, it might be better to have one post asking those two questions together since they are somewhat similar and in all likelihood, the other parts of your project may overlap unless these really are two distinct projects that don’t share screens, data sources, etc.

1 Like