Issues regarding hyperlink virtual columns

[Kirk_Masden]

I’m posting this as a “question” but it’s really more of a comment and a request for improvement.

@Steve has written a nice article on how to use a hyperlink expression to create an system-generated action that will take the user to an external URL:

help.appsheet.com

HYPERLINK()

New hyperlink

Steve’s explanation is fine, but AppSheet needs to work on this feature in my view. Here are some issues:

1. Text wrapping doesn’t work
   If you make a text virtual column and then manually make your own action to attach to it, all is well. If, however, you rely on the hypertext expression, no wrapping. I’ve written about this here:
   Make hyperlink text wrap properly
2. “Launch external” is poorly integrated
   I’ve written about this problem here:
   URL to launch externally instead of the appview - #20 by Kirk_Masden
3. The function fails to record the “Display inline” line automatically
   I haven’t written about this yet so here’s my explanation.
   Today I used the hyperlink expression to make the following link:
   
   
   
   The system automatically generated an action for me and correctly designated the “Prominence” as “Display inline” but failed to finish the job by naming the column to attach it to.
   
   
   
   Obviously, the default should be for the action to be attached to the column that holds the hyperlink that caused the action to be made in the first place – but that doesn’t happen.

Finally, I’d like to point out that when I have big tables and am concerned about the performance of my app, I don’t use this hypertext function. Instead, I make the linking action myself and then attach it to the appropriate text column. For some discussion, see the following:

Make an external link to look up a term in your data Tips & Tricks 💡

I’m building an app based on a list of about 8,000 English words that students of English should know. Detail views in the app have hyperlinks that take the user to external websites where the key term will be looked up automatically. In this little tip I’d like to show two ways of doing this. One relies exclusively on virtual columns and the other only uses real columns. I’m assuming that the second method would yield better performance, particularly on devices that are not very powerful, b…

[Kirk_Masden]

Kirk_Masden:

The function fails to record the “Display inline” line automatically

Though I think most of my points in this post a valid, I’m no longer sure about this one. I tried it again with a different link and the inline action was attached correctly and automatically. I’ll look in to what might cause the experience I reported. It may be that if you do things correctly it works but if you make some sort of mistake along then way, it’s not recover and assign the column correctly after you’ve fixed your error.

[Kirk_Masden]

I was able to confirm that, if you do everything correctly and then save your work, the action is attached correctly. BUT, if you add another virtual column after that, the attachment is temporarily lost. This is disconcerting but if you ignore it and keep editing, in comes back. Curiouser and curiouser.

[Steve]

Sounds like a bug worth reporting to Support. It would probably be helpful to Development if you could provide with your report a simple example app and specific instruction how to reproduce the problem.

https://www.appsheet.com/Support/Contact

[Kirk_Masden]

Thanks! Will do!

[Koichi_Tsuji]

This should not be a perfect solutions likely, but the recently released new feature of rich text may help you to construct hyperlink with the long strings as you want.
Just use the standart tag to generate the links then it looks like,

You just create the virtual column and make it long text with html and push expressions something ...

[Kirk_Masden]

Wow! I was unaware of this. Thanks!

[Koichi_Tsuji]

You can construct expression to dynamically change the URL to jump for. Make sure this only works in virtual column .

[Kirk_Masden]

Thanks again! I’m reading the announcement now. Somehow, I had missed it.

Rich Text Formatting - in Preview Program Announcements

The following feature has been added to the Preview Program. Feel free to try out the feature and report issues or possible improvements in this thread. AppSheet is expanding how text can be formatted. For data that is typed as LongText, app creators can now choose to render Markdown or HTML in Detail views. Note: In all views other than Detail, the value will render as plain text. How do app creators use the feature? Start with data that has HTML or Markdown inputs. In this example, th…

[Kirk_Masden]

tsuji_koichi:

Make sure this only works in virtual column .

I got it to work in a real (physical) column. I’m about to write about that in the thread announcing the new feature.

[Suvrutt_Gurjar]

That is an ingenious use case of rich text feature @tsuji_koichi .