As reported in the community, fixed a bug with Export CSV action exporting unfiltered data from views where filters have been applied.
Rollout changes
None
Preview announcements
Preview feature releases enable you to try out new app features that are not yet fully supported. See Product launch stages.
No new preview features were released today.
In addition, the AppSheet preview program lets app creators try out new app features that are not yet fully supported. For more details and to opt-in, see AppSheet preview program.
The reported bug (all the rows are exported even after we apply filteres to the row) seems to be fixed. However, the export CSV function still exporting COLUMNS which are actually hidden from the view.
For instance, we have A, B, C column in a slice which is source of list type view such as table view. We create the table view in the column order of B followed by C, while the A column is hidden from the table view. With this condition, the export CSV action is excuted, but the all the column values are unexpectedly exported to the CSV in the column order of A, followed by B, and C. This is not original behavior when this action of “Export this VIEW to a CSV file”.
As its name suggests, “Export this VIEW to a CSV file”, the columns and rows which are visible on the surface of the app should be exported, but the current behavior is “Export the source tables or slices to the a CSV file in the column order of the source table/slice”
If this behavior is not changeable and bug can not be fixed ,then this action name should be renamed to avoid confusions.
It would be nice to have both Export View and Slice to CSV actions.
Also for export Slice, the columns need to go back to their true column names and not the display names. This way slice exports can be edited and we can use Upload CSV. It used to work this way, but now with the display names you can’t re-upload the edited CSV data properly.
The fix mentioned here addressed a recent regression where user-applied filters stopped being respected (when they had been before until recently). These filters are passed from the client to the server and the bug and fix were related to that mechanism. I had the impression that export CSV never considered the view settings Column Order, did you mean here that it used to? I think it would be reasonable if it did, for the reasons you gave, but I don’t think it’s ever been the status quo. So I think changing that would need some solution for backward compatibility in case existing customer workflows depend on the current behavior. Maybe renaming the action description would be a simpler solution, although actually having a way to enable the desired behavior seems preferable. It’s something we can consider.
Good point. Since the CSV is exported to the end user, at some point we started applying the display names like other user-facing surfaces (probably driven by a customer support request). But breaking the ability to re-import the exported sheet would have been an unintended consequence (making export filter out data based on view ColumnOrder could also potentially be a problem for that use case). Rather than ignoring display names on export, I wonder if we could support uploading the CSV with display names and mapping them back to the underlying columns…
Yes a re-mapping underneath would be good too! I had to make an excel template with the real column names.
It would also be cool to Upload for specific columns (tied with the ID column) rather than needing the whole row’s data. Usually that’s how I use Upload for editing (marrying up data from other systems or clients).
But this probably isn’t possible since Appsheet uses whole rows for updating.
My memory is getting weaker as it gets older story now, however, when I worked with Phil (at the time of AppSheet) who developed this CSV action initially, and I was in talks with him for private preview stage, I remember I confirmed that the action worked as its name suggested at the end of the release of the feature, i.e. the action exported the data as we see in the view, namely only the records visible in view as well as the ordered columns as we see in the view as well.
As far as I remember correctly, the action should have worked in that way, as its name suggests.
The “export this view to a CSV file” action should, as its name suggests, export data filtered solely to the rows and columns currently displayed in the view.
Indeed, the following documentation states:
‘Note: Specifying Column Order for a Table View currently has no effect on which columns are exported or the order of those columns.’
However, no user would anticipate such behaviour based on this action’s name. Export this view to a CSV file - AppSheet Help.
The CSV will contain all columns of the table or the slice that you use for the view. It will not only contain the columns that you show in the view. If you have a table view, you can control that via “column order”. You can exclude a column from the table view. But it will be included in the CSV. You can use a Show_If for the column like CONTEXT(“ViewType”)="Table. Then it will be included in the CSV, but the values will be blank. So the only way to exclude a column from the csv is to use a slice without that column.
