First Concept

Records Are Data. Schema Describes the Structure Holding the Data.

Earlier lessons concentrated on People records. The Schema Explorer asks different questions. Instead of asking Quickbase "which People records exist?", we ask it to describe the application itself.

Record ID# 14
Name: Walter
Age: 45
Favorite Color: Orange

Table: People
Table DBID: bqpeople1
Key Field ID: 3

Fields:
3 → Record ID#
6 → Name
7 → Age
8 → Favorite Color

Earlier lessons could safely hard-code a single People table because they were teaching one known table. A reusable schema tool cannot make that assumption.

function getAppDbid() {
  const match =
    window.location.pathname.match(
      /\/db\/([^/]+)/,
    );

  if (!match) {
    throw new Error(
      "Could not determine the App DBID " +
      "from the Quickbase URL.",
    );
  }

  return match[1];
}

const APP_DBID = getAppDbid();

/db/bv3asij6q?a=dbpage&pageID=15
    └───────┘
      App DBID

Once the App DBID is known, the Explorer can ask Quickbase for the tables belonging to that application.

const endpoint =
  `https://api.quickbase.com/v1/tables?appId=${APP_DBID}`;

Required query 'appId' not found

Quickbase returns an array of table descriptions. JavaScript creates one option for every returned table.

tableSelect.replaceChildren();

for (const table of data) {
  const option =
    document.createElement("option");

  option.value = table.id;

  option.textContent =
    `${table.name} — ${table.id}`;

  tableSelect.appendChild(option);
}

The Code Page therefore does not need to know beforehand whether the application contains People, Orders, Tasks, Intake Assessments, or anything else.

function getSelectedTableDbid() {
  const tableSelect =
    document.getElementById(
      "tableSelect",
    );

  const tableDbid =
    tableSelect.value;

  if (!tableDbid) {
    throw new Error(
      "Select a Quickbase table first.",
    );
  }

  return tableDbid;
}

Then each inspection function obtains the current selection independently:

async function getFields() {
  const tableDbid =
    getSelectedTableDbid();

  ...
}

The finished Explorer deliberately does not transform the schema response into custom tables or diagrams. It displays exactly what Quickbase returned.

const data =
  await response.json();

output.textContent =
  JSON.stringify(
    data,
    null,
    2,
  );