Create a Data App from the Web - Observable Cloud

[gcoch]

It would we very useful to be able to create a Data App from the web, just like with Notebooks, which would then make it very easy to connect to an existing github repository.

[tophtucker]

I agree!! By chance I was already working on it, and it just went live; go to https://observablehq.com/select-workspace?next=projects-new and you can pick a GitHub repository to make a data app from it. Much faster than hopping back and forth between CLI and website.

Screen.Recording.2024-09-18.at.3.59.28.PM.mov

[tophtucker]

As for editing the name of the app, that’s determined by the title in your app’s observablehq.config.js file; it’s updated whenever you deploy. (Good reminder, I’ve been meaning to add a tooltip to that effect.)

[gcoch]

Hi, I actually think that when you create the app from Github it takes the name of the repo and not the title.

[tophtucker]

Oh man you’re totally right! Well, I knew we initially used the GitHub repo name as the data app name, but I thought it’d be overwritten every time you deploy.

But in fact we only update the data app title from observablehq.config.js if you deploy manually from the command line (like running npm run deploy yourself). We never update the title during a cloud build. I think that’s a bug. I’m looking into it.

In the interim, if you want to change the title you’ll have to (1) make sure you have the right title in observablehq.config.js and then (2) do a manual local deploy.

[tophtucker]

@mythmon fixed this in Framework; it’ll be included in the next release, which could take a couple weeks idk, and then you’ll need to upgrade to the latest version for your titles to start updating during cloud builds. Annoying! Sorry! Feels like a basic thing for us to have missed, so thanks for raising this!

[gcoch]

Related to this it would be very useful to be able to enable change the schedules from the web instead of in the yaml file.