Feature request:app extensions for export

[Steve Morris]

Brendan,

Do you ever plan to support the now standard app extensions format for export on iOS? I’m asking specifically because you can write simple app extensions in python using the pythonista app. That’s particularly interesting to me because pythonista supports quite a few graphics and plotting packages. Several of my forms are for tracking numeric things like weight and blood sugar (I’m a diabetic) where the most useful way to look at it is in a plot. I would like to create multiple simple extensions to show the data in various formats or to do calculations that are not convenient in TF like show the averages of measurements at different times of the day. I know I can export the csv file to the shared area then switch to python, find the script I want to run, tell it which file to use etc but it would be very nice to skip those steps launch the extensions directly from TF especially when I just want a quick look. It seem like the combination of TF as a front end to capture data and extensions (including pythonista extensions) to do fancy processing would be a powerful combination.

Since it is the standard I was sort of expecting this to be there already and was a little disappointed when I bought TF and discovered that the standard share icon didn’t pop up the standard iOS share dialog with its ability to add arbitrary extensions that are prepared to handle the data format. Not too disappointed (TF is too nice in so many other ways) but it would be nice.

-steve (aka zencuke)

[Steve Morris]

Oops it looks like it is there already. I just didn’t know where to find it because of your choice of icons. That puts TF back on my perfect app list. Thanks. Now to write a few extensions to make sure it works the way I hope.

[Brendan]

Hi Steve,

Which icon is not the standard icon you’re referring to? I’m glad that you found what you were looking for.

One issue that always bugs me is that when I ask iOS for an “action” button, it gives me what now looks like the Share button. The action button is used to display menus of things. But since it’s the same as the Share button now it’s a bit confusing. It would have been nice if Apple had a different icon for action. Maybe they think that the only actions you want to do in an app is to share something.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Steve Morris]

I take it back. The share (app extension) dialog only shows up for sharing a record and it only appears to export a tff file. The feature I am requesting, which I don’t think is supported, is to share (via app extension) the form csv file (in the form action menu?) so I can provide an app extension that will process the entire form. At the same time that will make it available for easy sharing with shreadsheets and anything else that is prpared to cope with csv files. For example it would support emailing the form csv.

Lower priority but it would also be useful to add the csv format with the record share option. It is my understanding from the pythonista docs that apps can supply multiple formats and let the extension choose the format it recognizes.

BTW: I guess there is a lot of confusion about the icon.
share-the-icon-no-one-agrees-on

[Brendan]

Hi Steve,

If you export the records as a CSV file, it will go into the Exports folder in the Files area. From there, tap on the file and then tap on the “Open File” command. The standard share sheet will come up.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Brendan]

That was an interesting discussion about the Share icon.

I thought about making the action button a gear symbol, but that denotes more of settings than actions.

Here’s the code I use to generate that button that displays the menu of functions to perform:

UIBarButtonItem *actionButton = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithBarButtonSystemItem:UIBarButtonSystemItemAction target:self action:@selector(actionButton:)];

Clearly I’m asking for a UIBarButtonSystemItemAction button and the “share” icon is what I end up getting.

[Steve Morris]

Well I’m glad the functionality is supported. I can use it the way it is so thanks but that is an awful lot of button clicking and file selecting to do what should be a simple operation from the form screen. Can I request that the share sheet be added directly to the forms action list? As an extension user I don’t even want to know that the file is saved somewhere. The word file shouldn’t appear in the process. I want to send the form directly to the extension app. I don’t want to have to select the file or need to delete the file later. The ugly details should be invisible. The existence of the file as intermediate transport adds nothing to the process of sending the form to the app extension. It wants to be a simple click and go.

However even it this never makes your priority list I can use it like it is so thanks.

[Steve Morris]

Pythonista uses a wrench for an action list which then has the share icon as one of the actions to select. I have no idea how common that is. They use gear for utilities and the wrench for actions on what is visible. It is too bad Apple hasn’t taken the lead on this. Instead they muddy it by keep changing things. Personally I can deal with anything if I can figure it out. Is there a doc anywhere that lists all of The Tap Forms screens and which icons do what? I have walked through most of them but I never would have thought to look for forms share by going to export then selecting the file first. I sort of makes sense in retrospect but…

[Steve Morris]

Documenting current process to share a form with an app extension:

1) In the form window click action (share) icon
2) Click export Records
3) Click OK to export complete dialog
4) Fiddle to make keyboard go away
5) Click on Files
6) Click on Exports
7) Click on the correct file
8) Maybe delete older files while we are here. Got to do it sometime.
9) Click on Open File
10) Click share icon
11) Finally select the extension you want

Requested feature:

1) In the form window click action (share) icon
2) Click on share icon
3) Select the extension you want.

[scneophyte]

Would you be willing to share the python code you’ve created? Are you using plotly?

[Steve Morris]

I don’t use plotly. I’m not a scientist. I capture data on the iPhone with TapForms. The data is of a private personal nature, mostly heath related (I’m diabetic.) I write python on the iPhone (using the excellent Pythonista app) The python code analyzes the data. I want to see the results of the analysis on the iPhone. I don’t see how putting my personal data on the plot.ly server adds anything to that flow even if I pay the extortionate monthly fee to prevent them from making my data public. plot.ly’s focus is on sharing data, either interactively within teams or for publication. I don’t want to share my data. So I analyze and plot the data the old way using python packages numpy and matplotlib and display io using Pythonista/iOS widgets.

Are you using Pythonista on iOS? My extension code is highly Pythonista/iOS and maybe even iPhone 6+ specific. I haven’t tested it anywhere else. the numpy/matplotlib stuff should be portable but the Pythonista/iOS interface is very idiosyncratic. I try to keep as much as possible in matplotlib, drawing plots into a PIL image. Then I display the image. The hope is that this would be easy to port. Only the image display needs to change.

[Steve Morris]

I used to capture data in a Pythonista app. Now I use Tap Forms but I’m not sure that is a win. especially when Tap Form sharing is so tedious. I thought I would effectively be extending Tap Forms by writing multiple Pythonista extensions. It should be a match made in heaven. If Brendan showed some interest it would be. My data needs are simple. I’m not connecting tables. Python nested dictionaries do everything I need. If I had to I do do some simple connections between dictionaries by hand. I wonder why Brendan hates people who share data and why he makes it so difficult. (OK I exaggerate. He probably doesn’t hate us, he just doesn’t care. Or to use business speak “It is low on his priority list.” ) I’m about ready to give up and go back to Pythonista. Maybe I’ll just stick with Tap Forms for less critical data. Tap Forms is overkill for this application. My data sets are small enough that I generally don’t use a database. I just store it in python data structures and serialize those to a file with some python serialize package or other. To the application the data always looks local. Since only one user creates and looks at the data (me) and the data is always on my phone I don’t have to worry about writing threadsafe code. I’m the only user on my iPhone.:-) and realistically I can only run one app at a time.

[Brendan]

Hey… I don’t hate anyone! And it’s not that I’m not interested. I just haven’t had many requests for sharing extensions. You’re the first and only!

But lets assume that I do add a sharing extension, what data is supposed to be shared? Just a CSV file as is already generated with the Export Records function?

[scneophyte]

Thanks for the reply, Steve. I’ve dabbled in python / ipython on Mac/OS as well as jupyter notebooks but I haven’t branched into the cool libraries. I suppose I gravitated to plotly as I am a scientist-of-sorts.

My knowledge of programming is rudimentary but I wouldn’t be trying to build complex models or show crazy relationships between data…just a few simple bar graphs and pie charts.

I’ll look at numpy/matplotlib. My knowledge doesn’t go far past knowing they exist. For my purposes, having this all work in a jupyter notebook would be good for me…

I wish there were more hours in a day!

[Author]

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