Comments

Using this block, you can allow your users to add comments on your Softr app. The comments are supposed to be added and linked to a List Details block, so you can only add them to a page with a details block.

So, let's review the block settings first, and then we'll see how it works on a specific example.

In the settings sidebar under the Data tab, you'll see an option to connect to a data source. This is optional, and the comments will work just fine without syncing with a data source. So, we'll review this part a bit later after getting familiar with the block settings.

Comment Settings

Here, you select how many comments appear on the page by default.

Features

In the Features tab, you can customize the Title and Subtitle of the block as well as apply style and formatting settings to specify how User Profile Image, User Name, Comment, and Date & Time appear.

How the block works (with example)

Now that we got familiar with the block settings, let's add one to our Softr app and see how it works. Let's suppose we have a list of tasks for a development team on our Softr app, and we've also connected a page with a List Details block to show task details.

As you can see below, we've added a Comments block below the List Details block with task details. This way, task assignees or other team members can open the task details page and add their comments for that task.

The following GIF shows how a user enters the task page and adds a comment.

Now, let's see how we can connect the Comments block to a data source to store the comments there as well.

Syncing comments with a data source

We are going to sync with Airtable, so let’s see how that’s done.

After clicking on the Sync to Airtable button, you'll be prompted to connect your Airtable account using the API key (if you haven't done that yet). As soon as you've connected to Airtable, a dropdown will appear to select the base where you want to store your data. After selecting the base, the dropdowns to select the Table and map the fields will appear as well (see below).

In the following screenshot, you can see the Airtable table we've prepared for storing the comments.

It has the following fields:

• Commenter ID - a text field for storing the ID of the user, which is the user’s email.

• Current record - a text field for storing the Record ID of the Airtable record displayed in the List Details block (i.e. the ID of the record that contains the current task data).

• Comment field - a text field to store the body text of the comment.

• Created date - a Date field for storing the date and time of the comment submission.

Below, you can see how we map the fields and then add a comment on one of our tasks to see how it's stored on Airtable.