How to quickly create elements using only drag and drop?

Someone wise once said, “I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” … or something. 

I’m a lazy person, nice to meet you :) and I love figuring out ways to make my life easier. So I’m here to share some ways to speed up and make your developer life easier too.

Let’s go over a few tricks to create new elements and automatically relate them to other existing elements.

Logic elements

1. When a variable of type entity identifier is dragged into the logic flow, it turns into an aggregate filtered by that variable.

2. We can also open the data layer and drag an entity into the logic flow to create aggregates. It generates a simple query over the dragged entity. If filters are required, it’s possible to add them after the drag and drop.

3. Then, to quickly create an if node, drag a variable of type boolean into the action flow. The If is created with the dragged variable as its condition.

4. Dragging other types of variables into the logic flow is also possible: When we do that, the platform creates an assign node to set the variable’s value.

Interface Layer

1. When we have a screen action and want to create a button to execute it on click, dragging that action into the screen turns it into a button linked to that action.

Additionally, double-clicking an existing button creates a screen action linked to it.

2. And of course, one of the most famous drag and drops: drag an entity to a UI flow to quickly scaffold the list and detail screens for that entity.

3. At last, if we change the previously scaffolded entity by adding a reference identifier attribute to it, it's possible to easily create a way for the user to edit that value. Since this is a reference attribute, we want to let the user choose from an existing list of options: iIn the detail screen of this entity, drag the new attribute to the form to create the dropdown list.

These are just some of the accelerators I use in my everyday work routine, and now you can too. 

And this is just one small yet significant step to becoming a supersonic developer with Outsystems!