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Shared View URL Filters can't be changed by viewer now(?)

  • May 20, 2022
  • 6 replies
  • 68 views
Julian_E_Post
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It used to be that when you used a URL filter for a shared view, the viewer could remove it using the ‘Filter’ button in the view. Now it appears that they can’t. This is actually great for my current purpose, and I think great in general, but the documentation still says that it can be changed by the recipient. Can someone confirm?

In the picture, the view shows all hours entered by employees into a timesheet. The shared view has a URL filter to show one specific employee. When you press the filter button, it says that the view is filtered, but doesn’t offer an option to change it. Again, I think this is actually a better way of doing things, but it doesn’t match the Airtable documentation notes.

    6 replies

    Rupert_Hoffsch1
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    Hi Julian, I’ve just checked Airtable’s documentation and their example + have tried with an own example. For me the URL filter still gets applied as a filter in the Airtable front end, so I wasn’t able to replicate your example. I also couldn’t find the message you’re receiving under the filter button (“Some URL-based filter conditions…”). So indeed very strange what’s happening here!

    kuovonne
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    • kuovonne
    • Brainy
    • 6009 replies
    • May 21, 2022

    The user can still edit the url, removing the filter. Some browsers hide the url parameters, but ultimately, the user still has access to the original url before clicking the link and can edit the url to remove the filter.

    It is up to you to decide how much security you need for your use case.

    Julian_E_Post
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    • Julian_E_Post
    • Author
    • Inspiring
    • 90 replies
    • May 24, 2022

    Hi Julian, I’ve just checked Airtable’s documentation and their example + have tried with an own example. For me the URL filter still gets applied as a filter in the Airtable front end, so I wasn’t able to replicate your example. I also couldn’t find the message you’re receiving under the filter button (“Some URL-based filter conditions…”). So indeed very strange what’s happening here!


    Thanks for both of your replies. Kuovonne, in my case, I am ok with the URL being editable, because you could always create a random number for each person (in the case of my timesheet) and use that in the URL filter. Rupert, I can offer slightly more information on this:

    The URL filter that produces the above result is filtering a Linked Record that comes from a text field (below).

    If I create a filter of the same view that filters by a number field, however, you CAN edit the filter in the shared view…

    That might explain why you couldn’t replicate it. Unfortunately, this still leaves us without much answer on why. I would suggest to the Airtable folks that there are many more scenarios where people would use URL filters that the DON’T want the recipient to change. After all, you can just send an unfiltered view to that user if you want to give them more access. How to others feel?

    Rupert_Hoffsch1
    Forum|alt.badge.img+21

    Thanks for both of your replies. Kuovonne, in my case, I am ok with the URL being editable, because you could always create a random number for each person (in the case of my timesheet) and use that in the URL filter. Rupert, I can offer slightly more information on this:

    The URL filter that produces the above result is filtering a Linked Record that comes from a text field (below).

    If I create a filter of the same view that filters by a number field, however, you CAN edit the filter in the shared view…

    That might explain why you couldn’t replicate it. Unfortunately, this still leaves us without much answer on why. I would suggest to the Airtable folks that there are many more scenarios where people would use URL filters that the DON’T want the recipient to change. After all, you can just send an unfiltered view to that user if you want to give them more access. How to others feel?


    Yes, I think it would make sense to let the user decide whether she/he wants users to change / delete filters. A bit of a workaround: If you click on “Embed this view on your site” and you take the link from the iframe (src), you actually have a pretty solid view where filters are applied and they can’t be removed! Here an example that I just created (table actually contains three records):

    Rupert_Hoffsch1
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    Yes, I think it would make sense to let the user decide whether she/he wants users to change / delete filters. A bit of a workaround: If you click on “Embed this view on your site” and you take the link from the iframe (src), you actually have a pretty solid view where filters are applied and they can’t be removed! Here an example that I just created (table actually contains three records):


    PS: forgot to say that you also have to toggle “Show view controls” off. This way the option of enabling / disabling actually exists (except for the weird potential bug of linked records which you described earlier).

    Julian_E_Post
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    • Julian_E_Post
    • Author
    • Inspiring
    • 90 replies
    • May 24, 2022

    Hmm that’s very interesting thank you @Rupert_Hoffschmidt! Following your advice, I took a look at the iframe URL. To take it one step further: It’s using the same view link, but with ‘/embed’ included before the link ID. So I just added ‘/embed’ to my formula that auto-generates a filtered URL link for each employee. That works. So you can get a filtered grid without filter controls, generated by a formula. Unfortunately my client also wants employees to be able to add their own filters, so it still doesn’t quite work for me, but it is definitely a viable option for dynamically creating somewhat tamper-proof filtered views!

    Formula:

    Result:


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