Hello World demo app error

[AdamSyd]

Did the basic “Hello World” demo app. ie. selected “Add an App” then “Build a Custom App”, selected “Hello World” example and went though installing blocks-cli, doing blocks init and blocks run.

I see the " Your block is running locally at https://…" message on my server.

I specify the App URL back on airtable’s message box and click “Start Editing App”, but after about a second I get this message:

Error running app

Error: Disconnected from development server pollForLiveReload/</<@https://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:9000/__runFrame/poll_script.js:19:19

(I replaced my IP with “XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX”)

When I try with “Simple Chart” example some GUI elements from the app show in the airtable’s dashboard space for that app, bu get the same error again after about a second…

Any hints on why this error is happening here appreciated… I’m using demo apps as provided by airtable…

[JonathanBowen]

Hi @AdamSyd - did you follow this example?

Airtable

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You don’t need to enter a specific IP address just enter https://localhost:9000 then click on “Start Editing App”:

[AdamSyd]

Hi Jonathan,

I’ve setup the app to run on a dedicated cloud VM (a Digital Ocean Droplet), not on my own machine. Hence the explicit IP address.

Is developing apps using this setup supported? Or do have to run the “under development” app on my own machine? It almost seems to work, as it shows the app contents briefly, until this polling error…

I think the instructions I originally followed were from here: Create your own Custom Apps with the Blocks SDK – Airtable Support but your link has same instructions.

[JonathanBowen]

Hi - this isn’t supported. You can either be in development mode, using your own machine locally or you deploy your app to to Airtable’s servers to run in standalone mode (i.e. when you’ve finished dev and what to run the app for real). You can’t run in development mode on a remote server as far as I know.

[AdamSyd]

OK, have switched to developing locally and was able to run some of the demo apps in local development mode.

But I’m now getting error when selecting “Remix from Github” with Airable’s sample “Vega-Lite” app: https://github.com/Airtable/apps-vega-lite

I see this error:

Error running app

Line 5389: Unexpected token … while parsing file: /home/adam/app_6_remixvega/node_modules/vega-embed/build/vega-embed.js

I made no changes to source code. Just did “block run” after the “block init” and cd to app directory, so you should be able to reproduce this error yourself.

Environment is new instance of Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS.

[Billy_Littlefie]

Hi @AdamSyd,

Sorry you ran into this problem! It looks like this was an issue with the package.json for the open-sourced vega lite example app. I’ve pushed up a new version of up which should solve the problem if you try block init using this template again.

Cheers,
Billy

[AdamSyd]

demo working now. Thanks!

[nik_milterson]

Thanks for this case. I also have the same solution!

[nik_milterson]

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