How to build a swipe-right component in Power Apps

tl;dr

Your canvas apps do not have to look ugly. This blog post guides you how to build a swipe-right component that you can reuse across apps.

What we are going to build

Create the Component with custom properties

1. Create a new component cmp_SwipeRight and add the following custom properties

2. Set the Width property of the component to cmp_SwipeRight.swipeWidth+10 and the Height property to cmp_SwipeRight.swipeHeight+20

background button

1. Add a button btn_background_1, set its DisplayMode property to View - We don’t want people to interact with this button. The only reason this is not a text label is that we can’t do rounded corners with a text label 🙄
2. Set the Fill property to cmp_SwipeRight.primaryColor, the BorderColor property to Self.Fill and the Color property to cmp_SwipeRight.textColor
3. Position the button to X = (Parent.Width-Self.Width)/2 and Y = (Parent.Height-Self.Height)/2
4. Set the Width property to Parent.Width-10 and the Height property to Parent.Height-10
5. Set the Border radius to 10 (it’s the default value)
6. Set the Align property to Align.Center
7. Set the Text property to If(sli_swipeRight_1.Value<100,cmp_SwipeRight.backgroundText1,cmp_SwipeRight.backGroundText2) - don’t worry, this will give an error as we are referring to a slider control that doesn’t exist yet - we will fix this in the next step.

slider

You guessed it - we need a slider control.

1. Add a horizontal slider control, set its Min to 0 and its Max to 100, Default is 0 as well
2. Set its HandleSize to 200
3. Set X to btn_background_1.X+5 and Y to 0
4. Set Width to cmp_SwipeRight.swipeWidth-btn_swipe_1.Width-12 and Height to Parent.Height
5. Set all color values to Transparent - this control should be invisible to users - still resist that urge to set the Visible property to false - users can’t interact with the control anymore if you do that
6. Set the OnChange property to If(Self.Value<100, Set(isActionSuccess, false), Set(isActionSuccess, true)); cmp_SwipeRight.Onchange(Self.Value) - We determine if a user has (completely) swiped right and output this into a variable.

swipe button

As we don’t want users to see the slider handle (you can’t change its shape), we need something else so that they know that they swiped :-)

1. Add a button btn_swipe_1 and again set its DisplayMode property to View - this is just to be pretty, not to have users interact with it directly
2. Set X to sli_swipeRight_1.X+ sli_swipeRight_1.Width/100*sli_swipeRight_1.Value+1 and Y to (Parent.Height-Self.Height)/2 - which means that our swipe button moves alongside with the (hidden) handle of the slider
3. Set Height to btn_background_1.Height-20 and Width to Self.Height
4. Set Fill to cmp_SwipeRight.secondaryColor and BorderColor to Self.Fill
5. Set the Text property to "" - we don’t need any text in here - the entire magic is done in a gallery

gallery

Speaking of a gallery - we need this to show those nice chevrons!

1. Create a horizontal gallery gal_chevrons
2. Set its items property to

Table(
{
id: 1,
icon: Icon.ChevronRight,
color: cmp_SwipeRight.chevronColor1
},
{
id: 2,
icon: Icon.ChevronRight,
color: cmp_SwipeRight.chevronColor2
},
{
id: 3,
icon: Icon.ChevronRight,
color: cmp_SwipeRight.chevronColor3
}
)

3. Set X to sli_swipeRight_1.X+ sli_swipeRight_1.Width/100*sli_swipeRight_1.Value+1 and Y to btn_swipe_1.Y - which means that our gallery will stick to our swipe button when it moves
4. Set its Width to btn_swipe_1.Width and its Height to btn_swipe_1.Height
5. Set TemplatePadding to 1 and TemplateSize to 12
6. Set Visible to !isActionSuccess - remember, this is set when we move the slider :-) As a result, the gallery wil disappear once we swiped
7. Add an icon icon_chevron to that gallery
8. Set the Icon property of the icon to ThisItem.icon
9. Set its Height to Parent.Height and its Width to 15
10. Set the Color property to ThisItem.color

This empty swipe button should now indicate, that the swipe was a success:

icon

1. Add an icon to your component
2. Set X to btn_swipe_1.X+ (btn_swipe_1.Width-Self.Width)/2 and Y to btn_swipe_1.Y+(btn_swipe_1.Height-Self.Height)/2
3. Set Width and Height to 16
4. Set Color to cmp_SwipeRight.accentColor
5. Set the icon property of the icon to cmp_SwipeRight.icon
6. Set Visible to isActionSuccess - as a result once the gallery disappeared, the single icon shows up

WE now want to add some more 3D effect to our component and have a nice shadow on the swipe button.

HTMLtext

1. Add an HTMLText control html_shadowSwipe_1 to the component
2. Set X to sli_swipeRight_1.X+ sli_swipeRight_1.Width/100*sli_swipeRight_1.Value-10 and Y to 4 - this way it moves along with the swipe button and the gallery
3. Set Width to btn_swipe_1.Width+25 and Height to btn_swipe_1.Height+25
4. Set its HTMLText property to "<div style='margin:5px;width:"&btn_swipe_1.Width&"px;height:"&btn_swipe_1.Height&"px;background-color:#;box-shadow:3px 6px 6px 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.14); border-radius:"&btn_swipe_1.RadiusBottomLeft&"px'></div>"

Bring all controls into the right order

Make sure that all controls sit like this:

Add the component to your app

Now let’s add the component to our app and play around with the appearance - as we set a ton of custom properties for colors, sizes, and icon, we can easily adjust the look of this component. You can try out for example to change the colors of the chevrons depending on the Fill color of your swipe button or different icons to determine success and of course different texts.

Still one thing is missing - we need to know when our user swiped, right? To do so, set the (custom) Onchange property of the component to UpdateContext({loc_isSuccessValue: valueslider}) - This way we set a local variable that returns a 100 if the slider was swiped completely.

Feedback & what’s next?

What do you think? Would you like to use such a swipe component in your mobile apps? Let me know on twitter!