Creating, saving and deleting data

Bubble comes with a range of ways to work with the data in your database:

You can manipulate data in the database in three different ways:

A workflow is a collection of actions that run in sequence whenever an event happens. You can choose from many different types of events, such as a button click, an input field being updated, or a specific condition becoming true.

A few different actions make changes to the database. Click the links below to see the core reference entry for each one:

By combining these actions in different ways, you can work with new and existing data flexibly, and add other actions, related or unrelated to the database, alongside them.

Say you've set up a form that lets a user edit their own profile. You'd have a few input fields where the user can provide information, and a button that triggers the workflow.

With this setup, no changes are saved to the database until the user clicks the button.

Workflows let you add further actions after the first one, to perform other relevant tasks. For example, you could use the alert element to display a message once the operation succeeds:

As this example shows, workflows are useful when you want the user to decide when to save changes, or when you need to chain more than one action together.

Auto-binding means binding an input element to a specific field on a data type. Once this is set up, Bubble automatically saves any changes made in that element to the database, so you don't need to set up any actions to make it happen.

Auto-binding is tied to a field, so the data format of the input element and the field must match. For example, a field that holds a date must be connected to an input element that expects a date from the user.

Auto-binding only works if the parent of the input element has a data type loaded into it, and it can't create new things, only write to things that already exist.

In the example above, we've set up a text input element that automatically saves its input to the Name field on the user. The user is loaded into the parent, which is either a container element or the page itself.

The data saves whenever the element loses focus, meaning the user has clicked or tabbed away from the input field. Bubble briefly shows a loading bar to let the user know the data is being saved.

When auto-binding is active, you can show an alert to let the user know it worked. First, place an alert element on the page. Then check Show an alert on success to select which alert element to use and what message to show.

In the screenshot above, we've created an alert element and checked Position the alert at the top, so it displays as a full-width bar at the top of the page.

On the input with auto-binding enabled, we've picked the alert element we just created, along with a custom message that matches the field being changed.

There are a few key differences to weigh when choosing between workflows and auto-binding.

The first is how it affects the user experience. In some forms, it makes sense to let users review their information before anything saves, until they click a button. In others, it's more efficient to save information as soon as a field is edited. It's up to you as the developer to decide what fits best in each case.

Bubble handles security on actions and auto-binding a bit differently. With actions, you control editing rights with conditionals on the workflow. With auto-binding, you control editing rights with privacy rules.

Workflows aren't affected by privacy rules and need their own conditional expressions to control who can do what. For example, in the action below, we've set up an expression that only allows a user to edit a profile if it's their own:

Auto-binding relies on a dedicated privacy rule that dictates under what circumstances changes to the field will save. The field stays editable, but when it loses focus, it generates an error message if privacy rules don't allow the user to save changes through auto-binding.

Workflows and auto-binding also differ slightly in how they perform:

There's no single right answer here. The difference is often small enough to be negligible, but it's still worth weighing against the overall user experience to decide which method fits best.

Bubble also lets you edit data directly in the built-in database editor. This works for both the Development database and the Live database.

You'll find the database editor in the Data tab, under App data. Select the data type you want to edit, search for a specific thing, and click the edit icon to make changes.

Editing directly in the database is useful for quick updates, but as a long-term solution, we recommend setting up your own forms to edit data instead.