User guide
Extensions
Extensions are small apps that sit next to your views in a base's extension panel: a chart that updates as records change, a print layout of the record you've selected, a preview of a record's link. They run in your browser, in a sandbox, with your own access, and only with the permissions they list.
Open a base and click Extensions in the top bar (on a phone, in the More menu). The panel opens on the right and stays open on that browser until you close it.
Add an extension
Creators and owners click Add extension and pick one of the built-in extensions:
- Chart: a bar chart of a table's records, counted by a field's values. Pick the table and the field in the chart; it updates live as records change.
- Print view: lays out the record you've selected (a grid cell, or the record you've opened) as a page. Choose fields picks what goes on the page; Print prints it.
- URL preview: previews the selected record's link from a URL field: YouTube, Vimeo and Loom videos and images play or show inline, other sites get an Open link button.
Each extension's menu (⋯) lists what it may do, and has Reload. Creators also move extensions up and down, make them small, medium or large, and remove them. A base has at most 20.
Everyone on the base sees its extensions, and each person sees them with their own access: a read-only member's chart counts the records they can read, and an extension can't change a record they couldn't change by hand. Editors and up change an extension's settings (the chart's table and field, the print view's fields); everyone else sees them as they are.
Permissions
An extension gets only the permissions in its manifest:
| Permission | What the extension can do |
|---|---|
| Read this base's tables and records | See tables, fields and views; read records; follow their changes |
| Create, change and delete records | Write records (as you, with your edit permissions) |
| See the table, view and record you have selected | Follow your selection |
| Change the extension's settings | Save its own settings (editors and up) |
| Show images from the web and videos from YouTube, Vimeo and Loom | Embed those players and https: images |
Whatever it asks for, an extension never sees your cookies or session, can't read or change the OpenRows page around it, has no storage of its own, and has no network access: its frame's security policy blocks requests, and its only way to your data is OpenRows, which checks every call. An extension can still navigate its own frame to another site; OpenRows stops an extension that does, but install third-party extensions only from people you trust.
Your own extensions
Write an extension with @openrows/blocks, the typed SDK, and bundle it into one package file: a JSON file with the manifest (name, version and permissions) and the bundle (HTML, CSS and one JavaScript file). The package's README describes the format and the whole API.
Creators upload a package in Add extension under Your own extension: OpenRows shows the
permissions it asks for before you install it. On app.openrows.io only workspace owners install
their own extensions. Self-hosted instances choose who may with EXTENSIONS_CUSTOM_BUNDLES
(creators, the default; owners; or off).