Legacy custom components
This tutorial refers to the legacy custom component feature of Retool. This method for building custom components is deprecated.
Tutorial
Add group chat to your Retool app
This tutorial will show how to create a group chat and add it to your Retool app using our chat component. Have Retool ready and let's get started.
Prerequisites
You will need:
- A Weavy API key
- A Retool account
1. Weavy API key and backend
We need an API key to communicate with the Weavy backend.
Sign up for an account
Before you can work with Weavy, you'll need to sign up for an account or sign into your existing account.
Select what environment you want to use for the tutorial
We need an API key to communicate with Weavy for authentication, etc
2. Get access token
For our Weavy component to work, we need an access token from the authentication workflow.
Go to Code in the left panel, click the + and select Import Workflow
- Name it
getAccessToken - Select
WeavyRetoolWorkflowfrom the Select Workflow dropdown - Update the
Workflow parametersaccording to the JSON snippet below.
Copy and paste into
Workflow paramaters
{
"uid" : "{{ current_user.sid }}",
"fullname" : "{{ current_user.fullName }}",
"email" : "{{ current_user.email }}",
"avatar" : "{{ current_user.profilePhotoUrl }}"
}- Change the
Run behaviortoAutomatic - Click
Save & Run - If successful, you should see an access token in the output window
Don't have the workflow?
Make sure you have imported the authentication workflow into Retool following our tutorial before adding Weavy features to your app.
3. Add custom component
Search for Custom component in the components search bar.
Drag and drop it onto the canvas and do the following in the inspector:
For Content;
- Remove all code in
Model - Remove all code in
IFrame Code
Check the following for Interaction;
- Downloads
- Forms
- Modals
- Popups
- Fullscreen
- Top-level navigation
- Storage and cookies
4. Pass access token
This will trigger the workflow, return an access token, and pass it to the custom component. Update
Model with;
Modify
Model in the inspector - copy and paste this code
{
"token" : {{ getAccessToken.data.access_token }},
"uid" : "retool-chat-uid"
}The model also passes along a UID, which is the unique identifier for the Weavy component. You can use this to dynamically set a UID from a selected row in a table, for example.
5. Add chat
In the IFrame code for the custom component, we'll initiate the Weavy context and pass the access token to the token factory for authentication.
Once authenticated, we can render the chat component from Weavy.
Modify
IFrame Code in the inspector - copy and paste this code
<script src="WY_BACKEND_URL/uikit-web/weavy.js"></script>
<script>
const weavy = new Weavy();
weavy.url = "WY_BACKEND_URL";
window.Retool.subscribe(function (model) {
weavy.tokenFactory = model.token ? async (refresh) => model.token : undefined;
wyChat.setAttribute('uid', model.uid);
});
</script>
<style>
:root {
--wy-theme-color: #3170F9;
--wy-border-radius:8px;
font-family: "Inter var", sans-serif
}
html, body {
padding: 0px;
margin:0px;
height:100%;
}
</style>
<div style="height:100%;display:flex;background:#fff">
<wy-chat id="wyChat" uid=""></wy-chat>
</div>Note
Replace WEAVY-URL with your backend URL.
No API key selected
You haven't selected an API key. If you do - code snippets, scripts and files you download will automatically be updated with API key and backend URL.
- Line 6 - getting the access token from the workflow passed through the model.
- Line 7 - getting the UID from the model and setting the attribute on the element.
- Line 25 - rendering the chat component.
6. Done!
The Custom Component with the Chat component should load instantly - but toggle to Preview mode to see the full experience.
Note that this is fully working now and available for all your users if you want - group chat added, just like that.
Known limitations
In this version of Custom Components, we're limited to the canvas area of the component when rendering file previews, etc.
Fill out all the values to continue.
Invalid input for the unique identifier.