How to implement nested repeating groups in Bubble.io for hierarchical data display

Implementing nested repeating groups in Bubble.io allows you to display hierarchical data structures effectively, such as showing contacts with their related emails or categories with their products. This powerful no code technique requires careful attention to data structure design and performance optimization.

Setting Up Your Data Structure

Before creating nested repeating groups, establish clear relationships in your database. For example, if you're displaying contacts with their emails, ensure your Email data type has a Contact field that creates the relationship. This parent-child relationship is essential for the nested structure to function properly.

Design your data types with scalability in mind. Consider how many child records each parent might have, as this directly impacts performance when using nested repeating groups in your Bubble.io application.

Implementation Steps

Start by creating your main repeating group with the parent data type. For contacts and emails, set the repeating group type to Contact and use "Do a search for Contacts" as your data source.

Inside the first repeating group cell, add a second repeating group for the child data. Set this inner repeating group's type to Email. The key challenge here is properly referencing the parent data in your search constraint.

When adding your data source for the nested repeating group, use "Do a search for Emails" with the constraint "Contact equals Current cell's Contact". However, if you've placed elements inside groups within the cell, you may need to use "Current group's Contact" instead, depending on your element hierarchy.

Managing Element Hierarchy

A common issue with nested repeating groups is losing access to the current cell's data when elements are nested within groups. If you can't access "Current cell's Contact", create a group as the immediate child of the repeating group cell and set its data type to Contact with "Current cell's Contact" as the data source.

This intermediate group acts as a bridge, allowing deeper nested elements to access the parent data through "Current group's Contact". This technique is particularly useful when building complex layouts that require multiple levels of grouping for design purposes.

Performance Optimization

Nested repeating groups can significantly impact your app's performance due to the multiplicative effect of database queries. If you display 5 contacts, each with 20 emails, you're actually loading 105 records (5 parent + 5×20 child records).

Consider implementing pagination on the parent repeating group to limit the number of parent records displayed initially. You can also set a reasonable limit on child records using constraints in your "Do a search for" expression.

For better performance, evaluate whether you truly need nested repeating groups or if alternative approaches like popup displays or separate pages might provide a better user experience while maintaining good performance.

Design Best Practices

When styling nested repeating groups, use responsive layouts consistently. Set widths to percentages rather than fixed pixels, and utilize Bubble's row and column layouts instead of fixed positioning.

Consider the visual hierarchy of your data. The parent repeating group should have distinct styling from the child repeating group to help users understand the relationship between data elements.

Test your nested repeating groups with realistic data volumes during development. What works with 3 test records might perform poorly with 300 real records, so always validate performance with representative data sets.