Where a mini app gets its data: tables and external sources
Lists in an app — products, services, a timetable, listings — are drawn from data rather than from layout. Here is where that data lives, who changes it, and what to do when you would rather keep it yourself.
A table inside the app
A project has tables: rows with columns, like any spreadsheet. A repeater block takes the rows and draws them as cards — which is why "add a product" means adding a row rather than building another screen.
Rows can be edited from a phone without opening the editor: that is the ordinary way to run a catalogue, a timetable or a price list. The owner can invite editors into the app’s data — they change rows without touching the project itself.
How many rows you may have depends on the plan. The ceiling is checked on write, so it is better known before a row fails to save.
Your own source
If the catalogue is already kept in a Google spreadsheet, it can be connected and the app reads from it. A file on Yandex Disk works the same way, as does any address answering with JSON — an export from your own system, for instance.
The point is not to keep a second copy of the data. If a manager updates products in a spreadsheet, let them keep doing it there and have the app pull it in.
We have no ready connectors to particular CRMs: what is connected is an address serving JSON, not an "integration with system X".
What stays with the visitor
Separately from your tables there are records the app keeps for the visitor themselves: a cart, favourites, an order history. They survive a reload because the person is identified by your bot’s signature — so the bot has to be connected.
Form submissions collect too: they reach your Telegram and stay in the submissions archive in the editor.
Other questions
- Which is better: an internal table or a Google spreadsheet?
- The internal one is simpler and is edited from a phone, invited editors included. An external one is better when the data is kept there anyway and changing the habit costs more than connecting the source.
- How often does external data refresh?
- The app re-reads the source when it opens. Instant synchronisation — change a row and everyone sees it that second — is not what to expect.
- How many rows can a list hold?
- Lists are paged as they scroll, so thousands of rows are ordinary. The limit comes from the plan and how many records it allows.