Tutorial: turn a project into an app with the Portal

Sometimes you don't need a custom frontend at all: you need a place where a few people can sign in and manage some tables. That's the Portal: every project can become a standalone app with its own address, login, table list, search and forms, without writing code.

1. Enable the portal

Open the project → Portal tab:

1. Check Enable portal.
2. Choose an address, for example inventory (3 to 50 lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens).
3. For each table, choose how it appears:

4. Save.

Your app is now live at:

http://falcondatabase.com/app/<your-username>/inventory/

The address includes your username, so two people can both have an inventory portal.

2. Who can sign in

People sign in with the users of the project (the Authentication tab): create them there with an email and a password. If Allow public sign up is on, people can also create their own account from the portal's sign-in page.

The portal session is separate from your dashboard account: signing in to a portal never gives access to your projects or keys.

3. What your users see

• A sidebar with the tables you shared.
• For each table: a search box (it searches every column), sortable columns and 25 rows per page.
• In View and edit tables: a New button and an Edit button on every row. The forms are generated from the columns: text and number inputs, date pickers, true/false selectors and a JSON editor. Required fields are marked.
• Validation comes from the database: a required column left empty or a duplicate in a unique column shows a clear error.

4. Private rows per user

If a table uses the Owner access rule, each portal user only sees and edits their own rows, and new rows are assigned to them automatically. Use it for requests, orders, timesheets… anything personal.

5. Public portals

Check Public portal to let anyone view the View only tables without signing in, for example a public catalog or a list of events. Even in a public portal:

• creating, editing and deleting always require signing in;
• Owner tables always require signing in.

Ideas

• Team inventory: items in View and edit, suppliers in View only.
• Customer requests: a requests table with the Owner rule, so each customer only sees their own.
• Public directory: a public portal with a View only members table.

Need more control over the design? Build your own frontend with the SDK. The portal and your custom app can use the same project at the same time.