Show collected data in your app

Form collection lets your app save what visitors enter. This is the other half: letting your app show that data back, a live signup count, a gallery of what people submitted, a public leaderboard, still with no backend. Your app reads from a data view you control, and you decide exactly what the world can see.

Caution

Reading is the opposite of collecting, so it needs the opposite care. Collecting is always safe (the public can only add). Showing data makes some of it public, so a data view starts as a count only, and turns no columns public until you tick them yourself. Nothing personal is ever exposed by accident.

Start with a count

The most common ask, “how many people signed up”, needs no personal data at all.

Steps

1. In Build, open the Data panel (the bottom strip, next to Forms).
2. Click Enable data reading. Onplana mints a read endpoint bound to your app’s list, in Count only mode.
3. Copy the endpoint or the fetch snippet, or just ask the agent to “show how many people signed up”, it wires the count for you.

A count-only view returns just { count }. It exposes zero personal data, so it is the safest thing to put on a public page. Reach for it first.

Show actual entries (you pick the columns)

To display real values, a gallery of photos, a list of names, switch the data view to Show rows and tick which columns are public.

Steps

1. In the Data panel, on your data view, click Show rows.
2. You’ll see every column in the list, each with a few sample values so you know exactly what you’re about to expose. “Message” sounds harmless until you see what people actually typed.
3. Tick only the columns that should be public. A banner names them in plain language: “Public to anyone who visits your app: Name, Photo URL.”
4. Untick to make a column private again. Changes take effect on the next request.

Caution

The ticked columns become readable by anyone who visits your app, no login, no permission. Email addresses, phone numbers, and free-text messages usually should not be public. When in doubt, leave a column unticked, or stay in count-only mode.

Only the columns you tick are ever returned. Everything else, and every column you never approve, stays private, enforced on Onplana’s servers, not by your app’s code. The agent can ask for a data view, but it can never choose or widen the public columns; that is always your click.

Let the agent build the display

Ask the agent things like “show a live count of signups” or “display a gallery of the submitted photos”. It calls for a data view, wires the endpoint, and builds the UI, a count immediately, and rows for whichever columns you’ve approved. If you haven’t approved any columns yet, it ships the count and tells you which columns to tick to unlock the rest.

Editable page content (a mini CMS)

A data view can also point at an Onplana Page instead of a list. Publish a Page, bind it to your app, and the app fetches its content, so you can edit your app’s copy in Onplana without a rebuild. Only a page’s published content is served, and only safe content blocks (text, headings, images, buttons); live data widgets are never exposed.

Keeping an eye on your daily limit

Each data view has a daily read limit that scales with your plan. The Data panel shows today’s reads against it. If a very popular app hits the limit, visitors briefly see empty data until it resets (within 24 hours), your data is never lost, and you’re notified so you can upgrade for a higher limit.

Questions

Can the AI expose a column I didn’t approve? No. Column approval is only ever your click, in the Data panel. The agent’s tool has no way to choose columns, and the server only returns the ones you’ve ticked.

What’s the difference between count-only and rows? Count-only returns a single number and exposes nothing personal. Rows returns the values of the columns you approved. Prefer count-only whenever a number is enough.

I made a column public by mistake, what happens? Untick it in the Data panel; it stops being returned on the next request. To take a whole view offline instantly, turn off Serving data.

Does this cost me anything? Reads draw on a per-plan daily allowance shown in the panel; there’s nothing to buy. See Playground plans and limits.

Related

• Control who can use your published app, the access mode decides whether this feature can be per-person or stays anonymous.
• Collect form submissions, where the displayed data comes from.
• Maker plans and limits, the daily read caps per plan.