Listings

In this document, we provide a complete overview of Listings and explain every part of how they work inside the Applin App Builder.

Listings are structured content items that come with predefined layouts or fully custom designs created by you. Together, these Listings form a complete CMS inside Applin, making your app’s content dynamic and easily manageable. You can display your data through horizontal or vertical list-style templates, and all content is stored on Applin’s servers (with a future possibility of migrating to a decentralized, blockchain-based storage system).

Listing Structure

The structure of a Listing is built around several key components: the Listing Types that define the data schema, the dynamic items that follow those schemas, the designed row page that visually represents each item, the main listing page that hosts those items, and optionally the connected APIs. In this document, we explain each of these parts in detail.

Listing Types

Every Listing begins with its Listing Type, which acts as the blueprint for its data structure. A Listing Type defines what fields a piece of content contains and how it should be represented. For example, a typical blog post includes an image, a title, and a body text. To implement this in Applin, you would create a Listing Type named Post and add fields such as photo, title, and text. Your content will later be filled into these fields. In addition to this, you can also define post categories within the same Listing Type, although this is optional.

Listing Pages

Once your Listing Type is ready, the next step is designing the visual layout for each item. This defines how a single Post item—based on the previous example—will appear to the user. For instance, in a page such as Main, you might design an image element that displays the variable $photo, place an H3 heading below it showing $title, and include a paragraph that renders $text. After designing this row layout, you name the page and connect it to your Listing Type. From this point onward, you can generate countless Listing pages using this design, with support for both dynamic (online) content and fully offline static content.

Listing Items

Listing Items are the actual online entries created based on your Listing Type. Applin gives you the ability to create, insert, edit, and manage all kinds of Listing Items following the fields defined in your schema. For any type of content—such as Posts—you can build your online items and display them on your Listing pages with complete control.

Listing APIs

If you want to fetch JSON data for your Listing Items from an external, non-Applin endpoint, you can use the Listing API feature. By creating an API Endpoint, you can connect your Listing Type to any external source or even build custom queries that filter which items appear on your pages and under what conditions.