Hope you are doing well regardless of where you are in the world!
I just started my job as a contractor internal full stack engineer at an entertainment company where they built things years ago via Retool for their internal content system management. However, I am a frontend-focus fullstack developer who knows React. Having done my user interview with internal users, I can discover lots of UI logic flaws; Since I would work at the firm for only 6 months, my manager told me that they would prefer to use retool because they wouldn't need any engineers and yet they are open to other suggestions because Retool like now is somewhat limited in some dynamic requirements for business needs.
I checked the self-hosted option, but I realised there aren't any way for me to see application code since it is a proprietary software; I am quite frustrated that I couldn't write React code as I used to, and I don't think Retool is made for frontend engineers like myself, but I was hoping that I could find out about some balance.
For example, I would like to have more control to like let some users view different things based on their roles, and I also like to write code to implement UI logics and optimise UX based on my figma design and my user research. it seems no way that I could do so, or I am just unfamiliar with Retool.
Has anyone come across this situation as an engineer? how has your experience been?
Retool is the environment where our components and any user build custom components exist. This means that things will be limited compared to building out a JS/React app from scratch, but that has pros in that a lot of the boiler plate for a frontend is already created and built into Retool. With the drawback being you do not have unlimited customization.
UI logic will be built into our 'Event Handler' where you can select 'Run script' to then write out javascript to do various operations and use our components and queries for accessing data.
For optimizing UX based on figma design, you may need to give me some more specifics on what your goals are. Definitely take full advantage of our docs and tutorials to see what Retool and and cannot do so you can best leverage the strengths of Retool while avoiding trying to build something that may not be supported
yes indeed, I tried the custom component. I have a question, because custom component I built for the firm to resolve a limit of Retool. The built-in file upload component can’t allow you to upload a file over 50 mb size. because the browser would blow up due to the built component defaulted to encode first.
above when the file size is small, builtin file input component works fine; Once the file is over 50 mb, the browser/client won’t work. so I solved this by building custom component using chunked file uploading.
yet the problem is that the custom component seems not be compatible with Retool component rendering tree (it is just my guess)
See my demonstration of problem below
the custom component (Select File, Upload, Cancel and the space) is static on the modal regardless of the tab changes.
Do you have any suggestions to resolve this?
Embedded Web app seems a solution to balance between the business needs and my development needs.
So I went on building custom built RBAC in backend, but I think the embedded app could be much useful by the first glance. Embed web apps | Retool Docs but I am not sure and will try it in this sprint.
Hey David - can you share more info about how your app and/or component is built? Custom components are rendered in their own nested iframe and, as such, should be compatible with other Retool primitives. Do you expect the component to not be rendered at all in one tabbed view? Or just in a different location?
The more information is that the GIF I attached was from the modal component, inside the modal component there are two tabs. so I placed my custom component inside but it can’t stayed in the desirable tab, but static on both tabs.
