I decided to write this short post following a comment some time ago on my comparative review of Airtable, Knack, Zoho Creator - which is now revised to include Ninox. In that comparison, I stipulate that Zoho Creator and Ninox's languages were very efficient in terms of number of lines required and simpler to understand compared to using Javascript (with Knack).

The Scenario

The use case I've decided to use for this comparison is one that has come up in many of the database forums I frequent and is typically only solvable with a little code - to prevent a person booking onto the same event more than once (i.e., validating their entry based on both the person entered and also the event entered).

Logically, what needs to happen is that when the person selects the event, the system needs to check for any other records for them with the same event - and if a duplicate is found to a) give them a message and b) remove the selected event from the input field.

Implementing this in Javascript

In Knack, users can write Javascript code which 'listens' for events which happen in the user interface - in this case for a field being updated - and here is the code I recently wrote to handle this scenario (replacing my application ID and API keys for security):





I realise here that I am being a little unfair to Knack in that you can build many solutions without writing any code at all - and I really enjoy building solutions for clients with it for that reason. However, when you do need to write some logic it gets really tough and I usually rely on using Integromat to handle it rather than coding - but this wouldn't be a suitable approach for this particular scenario.


Implementing the Same Login in Ninox

The following code was added to the After Update trigger for the Booking record:





In the spirit of full disclosure, I also had a Free Text (label) element which was only displayed if the field 'Already Booked' was Yes:




I hope you can see that the Ninox code is a) much shorter, b) easier to understand and c) represents data with table and field names rather than IDs?


Summary

My aim here is to really show what the advantages of Low Code development (specifically in online Database platforms) are when building business solutions.

However, it's not just the simplicity - it's also the way an integrated language such as Ninox's let's you learn at a gentle pace - starting with a simple formula field such as:

'Lookup Price' * Quantity

I could have used other platforms (than Ninox) for this comparison - such as Access Web Apps (if I still had access to it) - or even Access itself. I am convinced that No Code or Low Code solutions are the way forward for building business solutions generally.


Find out more about Ninox: Learn about Ninox

Find our more about Knack: Knack Details

And Integromat: Integromat Site