Refresh Gallery after Collection updates

[rolm]

Howdy.

I'm trying to refresh my gallery to see the latest updates of my local collection (not the datasource directly but a local collection) but doesn't refresh...

So I have a gallery that I fed with my local collection (in Items property). And in that gallery I have my controls like icons and text inputs to add new records or edit the existing ones of the collection.

So for example, when I click on an icon (OnSelect property), it adds new record - using Collect(locCollection, {col1: "name"}).

And when I use OnChange property from a text input - using Patch() or UpdateIf() it edits an existing record. I checked in  Variables > Collection section in power apps, and locCollection updates perfectly everytime!

However I don't see these updates in the gallery (locCollection is set in Items). Now I'm aware of the Refresh(locCollection) but doesn't work nor does Reset(myGallery).

I saw in other topics that you could use ClearCollect. But it means I have to make another copy of my locCollection? So that I could perform ClearCollect (locCollectionCopy, locCollection) and apply a boolean logic on Items to switch them alternately?

In any case I don't like this tricky method, is there a proper, smarter approach to accomplish this please?

Thank you!

[rolm]

Yes that's right. And that's what drives me crazy!! I made a demo were I was able to "force" to refresh the nested gallery using boolean logic: Refresh Nested Gallery after Collection updates.webm - Google Drive. But that's about it.

Just by curiosity, were you able to reproduce this issue on your end? (not to ask you to, but just wondering)... Am I the only one in this case? BTW thank you so much for your help!

[WarrenBelz]

Hi @rolm ,

I see one issue now which I do not quite understand

UpdateContext( {varSelectedCategoryProducts: LookUp(colProductTestingsByCategory, Category = "Microsoft SQL Server").Products} );

Collect(
    varSelectedCategoryProducts,
    {
        Title: "New Product 2",
        EOL: Today(),
        EOSL: Today(),
        Notes: "A short Note (" & nfProductNotesCharactersMaxLength & " characters max)",
        Status: "toAdd"
    }
);

You are setting a Context Variable varSelectedCategoryProducts and then using Collect to add to it - should that be the collection in the second part ?

[rolm]

Yes from the main collection colProductTestingsByCategory, I store the 1st row's 2nd column Products item (which is a nested table) into varSelectedCategoryProducts (context variable) - to simplify the readability of the code. But I also tried using directly 

LookUp(colProductTestingsByCategory, Category = "Microsoft SQL Server").Products} )

instead of 

varSelectedCategoryProducts

 like that:

Collect(
    LookUp(colProductTestingsByCategory, Category = "Microsoft SQL Server").Products} ),
    {
        Title: "New Product 2",
        EOL: Today(),
        EOSL: Today(),
        Notes: "A short Note (" & nfProductNotesCharactersMaxLength & " characters max)",
        Status: "toAdd"
    }
);

 But it doesn't change anything: it still doesn't auto update the nested gallery

[rolm]

@WarrenBelz 

Just to make sure that's an unrelated issue to my main app, I made a new blank canvas app again with a local manual table 'colMovies' containing nested ones. And made another demo: Refresh Nested Gallery after Collection updates - New Blank App Demo - Google Drive.

As you can see the issue it's still the same, so I'm assuming this is a general power apps issue related to the nested galleries that needs to be raised.

Thank you!

[rolm]

Hi all and hi to you @WarrenBelz,

Just thought of sharing my last finding about my issue here.

Let me briefly describe the context again:

1. You create a collection with a column containing a table datatype (sub-collections) - usually you get that when you perform a GroupBy() for example.
   
   
2. You "feed" that collection to a gallery (Items field) that contains nested-galleries - made to reflect the collection structure

When you update a sub-table within the collection, it won't be reflected in the nested gallery as it should be. That is obviously a bug and I hope it will be fixed by Microsoft at some point.

Meanwhile a workaround is to update any column / any row (in the "root" collection), along with the sub-table update. To update a field, UpdateIf() is the most suitable because Patch() doesn't work (buggy on a local collection as it seems) and Update() overrides the whole row in the collection.

Here's an illustrated example:

I hope it will help other people. And I wanted to thank you again @WarrenBelz for taking the time to help me out here. I can close this topic now. But I would appreciate it if someone could raise this issue to Microsoft (if discussing in a topic here isn't the way to go).

[RobinHenriksen]

Thank you for updating the thread! I was having the same issue as you. 

I have nested collections in my main collection, and I display all the nested collection in different galleries. When the "Complete" column is changed the current item is supposed to be sorted to the bottom and change templatefill color. I've checked that my nested collection was actually being updated according to the checkbox and everything else seemed fine as I've done this on galleries that are not nested. However, my galleries using nested collections did not update.

With your solution I created a dummy column in my main collection, and then I update that column at the same time I update the "Complete" column in the nested collection, and now the gallery is refreshed as it is supposed to. I don't think I would've figured this out without your post 🙂

Creating dummy column

"OnCheck" property of my checkbox within the gallery. Updating "Complete" column first, then updating the "dummy" column.