I want to preface this post with an apology to Thunkable's brand designer - I tried to add a Matrix-style trench coat to their mascot for my title graphic and I'm pretty sure I was only partially successful! 😂. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

Today's adventure is a request from the mailbag!

Lydia wrote to me and asked for a Thunkable video:

"I want to use Thunkable to make a quote of the day app."

This is a response to this post, where I shared about how I built my first Thunkable app (a Lord of the Rings quote app) in about 30 minutes and was amazed by the capabilities of the platform.

So for those of you who don't want to watch the video (shame on you! YouTube is where it's at, yo!), here's a summary:

Thunkable makes it very easy with their "Data Sources" feature to link a Google Sheet to your app and use it as a data source. I'd imagine that in the world of rapid prototyping that's a much more fun arrangement than getting someone to spin up a database... though Thunkable can totally operate in that space too!

Once you've created your google sheet and made it public (viewers only access for this, I don't need y'all making all sorts of horrible quotes appear in my app!), you go into Thunkable and build your app. This one can happen on a single screen with 3 objects - two labels and a button. My example data source has 2 columns: one for the Author of the quote, and one for the message itself.

Something else to be aware of - you have to add the data source to each app that uses it individually, so don't forget to do that before you get into the Blocks editor. You can of course go back and do it later, but it might leave you puzzled for a minute about why the data sources menu isn't showing in Blocks!

This sample app is very simple - here's the entirety of the Design:

and here's the entirety of the logic:

Note that we hard-coded the total number of quotes. I'm sure you could expand on this to figure out how many there are and use that as the upper bound for the randomizer, but the quick version I did for this post requires you to update that if you change the number of quotes available.

Wrapping up

Thunkable continues to impress me as a product for rapid prototyping and quick builds. I can't wait to see what you build with it - drop a link in a comment and share your work!