I’ve just learned that the app I’m building must have mobile off-line functionality. I know this isn’t something Tadabase can presently do or appears on the Roadmap.
Does anyone have any advice or experience on how to get there?
Has anyone tried native conversion services – e.g. gonative.io, etc?
Or is there a mobile building platform that integrates well with Tadabase that I can build a mobile interface on?
I’d prefer not to move from Tadabase, but I’ve been told this functionality is must-have.
I haven’t created a fully offline app yet, but in theory you could:
Route the domain or sub-domain through Cloudflare using their free DNS service
Follow this tutorial to create a web app with an installable mobile icon
Setup a Cloudflare Service Worker to handle the offline capability
Deliver an offline compatible PWA to the client
It should work on Android seamlessly. I know it’s possible on iOS, but getting it to function like a “native” app is a litte more tricky.
Unfortunately, I don’t have much experience with Service Workers. The farthest I’ve ever gotten with mobile apps is creating a functional manifest.json.
To be more specific: I am confident you can achieve your goal (as I understand it) with a PWA, but I’m not 100% clear on how to create one (or if possible) with Tadabase
Edit: The other thing that might help is creating your tables and lists using custom component that collapse down to “cards” on mobile. It saves you from having to create separate views for desktop and mobile.
I looked into tb PWA couple years ago mostly to have the full screen mode but then after looking into this i decided it too much effort and gave up on that idea. Lot of work becuase the page nav back and forward has to be built etc… just not worth it i thought. For me better to wait or look at other ways to get the full screen mode. For off-line with full db functionality and sync when back to on-line mode I used something called ‘Glass’. This was nearly years ago with ms access back end sitting on a networked PC acting as the server db for multi-user front end on Glass. The front-end was on iPad and it worked with no issues.
That’ a good point about navigation. I solved that by using a sidebar with toggle expansion.
Essentially every page was accessible from the sidebar, and the few that weren’t had either a “submit,” “save” or “cancel” button that would return them to the dashboard.
This forum app is a good example of simple navigation for PWA. Try installing it and using with the navigation.
I really need this too as our workers are in and out of cell phone reception all day.
I’m looking at using bubble.io as there is a plugin for PWA. I only really need a simple page with forms then hopefully i can api link to tadabase app.
Is there anything i could do without utilizing bubble.io ?
Is the tadabase PWA feature still in the works for end of 2022 early 2023?
I tried this about 8 years and demonstrated a fully functioning cheap solution to senior management team of a certain wind power manufacturer. Maintenance & Service engineers sent to work on off shore wind turbine (at the time) located in the north sea had to overcome internet connectivity challenges while inside the wind turbine.
I built a cheap solution for the company to consider against the alternatives.
Off line transactions worked, afterwards when the engineers returned on-shore and inside company wifi the sync to master database records also worked.
As i say, this was long time ago and im sure there might be other off-line solutions out there which TB can api into… here is where my knowledge ends so I will stop speaking, Im just sharing what i know to benefit TB community.