Building Custom Components with ChatGPT

Hey everyone, it's Tim from Tadabase, and welcome to another episode of Build It with Tim! Today, we're diving into an exciting journey of using ChatGPT to craft custom components for your database application.

Have you ever felt like a web development novice? Well, I'm right there with you. But fear not, because we're about to explore how ChatGPT can transform the way you design and build powerful custom components.

Our goal for this episode is to construct social media posts within a custom component using ChatGPT's assistance. So let's break down the steps.

1. Setting the Stage: In our database application, we're dealing with data that needs to be displayed as social media posts. While traditional methods like the list component could work, we're going for something more dynamic – the custom component.

2. Unleash ChatGPT: We're going to leverage ChatGPT to help us create this custom component. By asking the right questions and feeding our data to ChatGPT, we'll receive HTML and CSS templates that resemble social media posts.

3. Designing with Custom Components: Enter the Tadabase custom component, a canvas for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript creativity. This component retains the power to load records from a specific data table while offering complete control over the visual design.

4. Dialogue with ChatGPT: We're selecting the list type to display all records from our social media posts table. Here's where the magic happens – ChatGPT will guide us through identifying and assigning fields within the custom component.

5. Overcoming Hurdles: Our data includes comma-separated strings for user avatars and usernames who liked a post. This is where ChatGPT truly shines. It helps us create custom helpers using the Handlebars.js library, breaking down these strings into individual elements.

6. Iterative Refinement: The conversation between us and ChatGPT evolves as we refine our design. We tweak templates, test, and adapt based on the suggestions ChatGPT provides.

7. Crafting the Final Product: After some back-and-forth, we've refined our custom component with a more realistic design. The interactive process with ChatGPT has enabled us to adjust layouts and styles, resulting in a polished and professional outcome.

8. The Grand Finale: In the end, we've mastered the art of using ChatGPT to create beautifully tailored components for our web app. No coding expertise? No worries! ChatGPT acts as a knowledgeable guide, helping us navigate the intricacies of custom web development within Tadabase.

So there you have it – the exhilarating journey of using ChatGPT to build and design dynamic components in Tadabase. Ready to unleash your web development potential? Watch this video and embark on your coding adventure today. Thanks for joining, and until next time, take care!

Features Discussed:

1. Custom Component (Time: 2:42)
   Learn how to ask ChatGPT for help in creating HTML and CSS templates that resemble Instagram posts. This feature shows how to use Handlebars.js templating for custom components, making it easy to design complex layouts.
2. Custom Component (Time: 3:49)
   Learn how to manage comma-separated user data, like user avatars and names, using custom helpers in JavaScript. For example, learn to create a helper that breaks down comma-separated strings to display individual user information.
3. Custom Component with CSS Styling (Time: 8:10)
   Learn how to fine-tune your layout, such as displaying user avatars in a single row with overlapping effects, and making necessary CSS adjustments. This feature focuses on polishing the design to achieve a professional look.

 

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Transcript Summary

Introduction

Hey everybody, this is Build It with Tadabase.

Overview

On today's episode, we're going to talk about how you can use ChatGPT to help you build and design custom components inside of your Tadabase application. Now, I'm the first to admit that I am not an expert web developer. I don't have any formal training whatsoever—everything that I've learned, I've learned along the way. I know a little bit of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—enough to get me by. ChatGPT is a tool that I use pretty frequently to help me answer questions when it comes to custom code or low-code solutions. By asking the right questions and feeding some Tadabase data into ChatGPT, we can get ChatGPT to build components for us inside the Tadabase custom component.

Using ChatGPT to Build a Social Media Post Component

Today, we're going to use ChatGPT to build some social media posts inside of a custom component so that you can be the web developer that you've always dreamed of.

Here’s what we’re dealing with: inside the Data Builder in our Tadabase application, you can see I have three social media posts stored inside this data table. I've collected all the information that I need in order to place that data on a social media post, but my problem is I don't have any way to actually display it as a social media post. I could use things like the list component and try to configure that to look somewhat similar, but what I want to use instead is the custom component.

For those of you who are not familiar with the custom component, it allows us to create HTML templates with our own HTML, CSS, and JavaScript while retaining the native functionality of loading records from a particular data table. I'm going to add this custom component to this page, and we'll get started with asking ChatGPT our questions.

We’re going to choose the list type because we want to display all the records from this table, and the table we want to display the records from is "social media posts." Now, when you add fields to the custom component, you're going to be shown the field ID, so we're going to use this information to tell ChatGPT which field is which.

Initial ChatGPT Query and Response

One of the huge advantages of using ChatGPT to help us with the custom component is that the custom component uses a public library called Handlebars.js. It allows us to do this templating-style design when we're building out components.

I started by asking, "Using the following data, create an HTML component that looks exactly like an Instagram post." What I got back was an HTML document that contained both the CSS and the HTML that I needed. I took this information and copied it over into our templates. We’re also going to grab the CSS here and paste it into the CSS tab.

Refining the Component with ChatGPT

When I first previewed this page, I had a pretty decent result, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted. The next thing I asked was, "Can you add a section to this post that shows who liked it?" because we have fields inside our data table that store the users and also the user avatars of those who liked the post.

ChatGPT responded with new CSS and HTML to handle that. I pasted in the new values and updated the component. When I previewed the page again, it looked better with more information at the bottom, but there were still some issues. For instance, we were feeding the custom component a comma-separated string of usernames and user avatars, so I asked ChatGPT how to handle that situation.

Handling Comma-Separated Strings

Field 145 and 144, which are the users' avatars and usernames who liked the post, are actually comma-separated strings with multiple values. ChatGPT provided a script intended to break apart the comma-separated values. However, when I tried to use this in the JavaScript tab, it didn’t work.

The problem was that the "each like" and "like users" helpers weren’t real. But one of the huge benefits of the custom component and using the Handlebars.js library is that we can register our own custom helpers. I wouldn’t have known how to do this, but ChatGPT does.

Registering a Custom Helper

I referenced the Tadabase Help Center documentation for custom components, specifically writing your own custom component helpers. I copied an example from the documentation and went back to ChatGPT, saying, "I think I need to register that helper first." ChatGPT recognized that and gave me a new script to register a helper that does exactly what we need—break apart the comma-separated strings and create individual items.

I realized that custom helpers need to be defined at the page level JavaScript, not the custom component level, because we need that helper registered before the custom component even loads. I asked ChatGPT the right questions, used the Tadabase documentation, and was able to register the helper.

Updating the Component

I went back to the Builder, pasted the helper into the page level JavaScript, and updated the HTML in the custom component. The custom helper was now being used instead of the random helpers that ChatGPT initially gave me.

Further Refinements

I continued asking ChatGPT to refine the component, such as changing the liked section to not display the liked name and having the like-by avatars displayed in a single row with a slight overlap, like you see in social media posts. This back-and-forth continued until I had a finished product that looked refined and realistic, with all the changes made along the way.

Conclusion

In the end, I had a fully functional and visually appealing social media post component. Tadabase has a ton of helpers that you can use to help you format the data you're displaying in the custom component, but if you need to create your own custom helper and you’re not familiar with JavaScript, then please leverage ChatGPT, and you’ll get amazing results.