Solved: Is there really no way to reuse code?

Pjames43 · ‎03-04-2022

I have buttons on three different screens on my app that do the same things. Some of these do three or four things when you push them. As far as I can tell, the only way to get them all do the same thing is to cut and paste the code from one to another.

Am I missing something?

RandyHayes · ‎03-04-2022

@Pjames43

Yes, as @TheRobRush mentioned, I am not saying that PowerApps is just a different Excel, not at all. PowerApps has a vast amount of power and capability. My point though is that PowerApps is designed using formulas on properties (like cells in Excel) and also provides behavioral actions, which Excel does not have.

Select across screens is not a bug, that is by design. It would make no sense to select a control on another screen, especially since that screen may not even have been initialized in the app at that point. However, you CAN interact with controls across screens and you can also create contained actions through controls like toggles. Then you can cause the toggle to go true and thus perform the behavioral action. So all that can be done.

A component also CAN navigate to any screen you want. However, for the component to "know" about your screens breaks the concept of components. Instead, if you are passing the screen into a property of your component, then by all means that component can then navigate to that screen - but by the name of the screen as determined by the property.

The only advice I can provide in general is (because I've encountered your feelings by many) to try to discontinue looking at any of PowerApps as development. Get a better feel of how everything is referential in PowerApps and how everything evaluates itself all the time in the app, just like Excel formulas. If you find yourself using behavioral actions (OnXxxx actions) a lot, then you are looking too much at the platform as a development platform.

PowerApps is very capable of very large and sophisticated apps. The time to production is tremendously short in comparison to real development, and the infrastructure to support all devices with security across them all is already in place. So, there are some real advantages.

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Pstork1 · ‎03-04-2022

No there is no way to directly reuse code. Depending on the code you can often put it in one control's onSelect and then simply add Select(control) to another controls onSelect to execute the same code. But that's only if the code doesn't depend on the context of the OnSelect to run correctly.

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TheRobRush · ‎03-04-2022

Depending on what they are doing you can make a Custom Component that you use throughout your app. But if it's limitations don't work for your use case then yes, copy paste. Though you can copy paste the control itself, don't necessarily need to place a new one and copy paste the code inside it.

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RandyHayes · ‎03-04-2022

@Pjames43

Depends on how you look at things! If you are looking at PowerApps as development (which it is not), then no, "code" is not reusable in such a way and the only options you have are components or simulating actions with Select functions.

If you look at how PowerApps was designed - around Excel - then you are creating formulas in "cells" just like Excel, so you can reference anything from anywhere and this provides what would be consider re-usable.

So in your scenario, a component to serve as the buttons for across all the screens with a behavioral property that will initiate a Toggle (as a Select will not work across multiple screens) on some screen that has the Formula in it that you want to re-use. This is all quite possible to do.

I hope this is helpful for you.

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Pjames43 · ‎03-04-2022

Is there actually a way to build a component that references specific items inside your app, like "Navigate(MyHomeScreen)"? I couldn't get that work. The fact that Select() doesn't work across screens seems like a bug honestly. I can get the properties of a button on another screen, but I cannot Select it? Huh?

It just feels like it is certainly marketed by Microsoft as being substantially more capable than Excel. Honestly, I didn't know that it was designed so much around Excel, and that explains a lot. I barely use Excel so maybe that is why I struggle with Power Apps so much.

Or maybe my frustration comes mostly from how Microsoft is marketing Power Apps.

From https://powerapps.microsoft.com:

Give everyone the power to build the apps they need with advanced functionality previously only available to professional developers—including pre-built AI components.

Not sure what the advanced functionality is if I can only do what Excel can do, but a little prettier. I find it hard to believe that it would take much to add features like writing a simple function, to it. I am not even talking about a complex function, I just mean like a list of commands, that I want to use more than once.

I am stuck using Power Apps because of my company, but honestly Microsoft's "Low Code" approach is the worst of both worlds. It isn't as easy and drag and drop, and you cannot do any real development. I have the same issues with Power Automate. The fact that I can "Peek Code" but not edit it feels a bit like a middle finger from Microsoft.

TheRobRush · ‎03-04-2022

I have to disagree on some of those points. With PowerApps you can certainly do some very impressive stuff, especially since it runs on mobile devices, where your advanced excel functionality (custom coding in the background etc.) is (at least on apple os dont know about android) not an option. When Randy says it is built modeled after excel he isn't saying PowerApps isn't able to handle advanced functionality.

And as for flow, you can edit flows code, just not in the browser. Export your flow and you can then open and edit it in any notepad or whatever you would normally edit code in, then repack and import it back into PowerAutomate, do it sometimes myself just to get some complicated stuff in that the web browser is making hard for me.

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TheRobRush · ‎03-04-2022

You can make a custom component and add a button to it and make the onselect Back() this will bring you to previous screen you came from not sure if your home is previous screen from one you will be on or not

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TheRobRush · ‎03-04-2022

I think this tutorial by @rorybi might be of interest to you PowerApps Tuesdays Tutorial #43

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Pjames43 · ‎03-04-2022

@TheRobRush wrote:
I think this tutorial by @rorybi might be of interest to you PowerApps Tuesdays Tutorial #43

Thanks I will give that a watch.

Pjames43 · ‎03-04-2022

@TheRobRush wrote:
You can make a custom component and add a button to it and make the onselect Back() this will bring you to previous screen you came from not sure if your home is previous screen from one you will be on or not

That won't work there are seven screens total in my app. Three different ones have the button in question so Back() doesn't really help.