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Notamisanthrope
Notamisanthrope
Jan 29, 2021 5:56 PM UTC

Repeater 🔥 (Auto-Layout evolution)

Hey guys,

Let’s be real. The main spectrum of work with UI, whether it’s an app, or a website, is displaying data or content (such as feed, lists, posts, comments, etc).

We can do a component of a post card, for example. Then duplicate instances, and wrap that in an auto layout.

It would be cool to have a repeater that shows right up after you’ve activated the auto-layout, where you can specify how many times to repeat the instance (component) and bind data to it.

Repeater

At the same time, it would be cool to have a centralized data location somewhere (i.e. when you click on the data, open a shared data set so that the same data can be accessed from different repeaters).

(Screenshot is just to deliver the idea, it’s far from the perfect UI, I didn’t spent much time of thinking it through since Figma has a great product team on board to elaborate it and deliver in an amazing simplified way)

It feels like it’s a very natural evolution of Auto-Layout feature.

So, what do you guys think?

(P.S. Sorry for my English, it’s my second language)

    42 replies

    Show previous replies
    Thomas_Catnach
    Feb 24, 2023 11:34 AM UTC

    Bumpity-bump! Would be a really useful feature to have.

      deletedlc
      deletedlc
      Feb 24, 2023 2:24 PM UTC

      omg yes, a thousand times of yes to this. And if somehow Content Reel would work with this, OR (just saying!) Notion would work with this, wow…

        deletedlc
        deletedlc
        Feb 24, 2023 2:25 PM UTC

        aaaaaahhhhhhh native CMS don’t attempt me with a good feature

          Tyra_Jorel1
          May 10, 2023 2:03 PM UTC

          Hey @Josh , do we have any prospect on something similar to this? Thank you!

          Travis12
          Travis12
          New Participant
          Jul 24, 2023 7:01 PM UTC

          Has anyone figured out a tolerable workaround for this?

          This is one of the biggest issues I’ve found switching to Figma from XD. In XD, you are able to customize everything within a component instance. In Figma, the only way I know of to use dynamic content within a component is to use an “instance swap” property.

          In general I prefer Figma’s restrictive approach to components, except it is a huge hassle when your component will have an unknown number of repeating child components. You either need to create one-time use components for each specific screen or you create a variant for each possible number of repeating components.

          Repeating components is such a common pattern I think it would be incredibly useful to have this as a built in feature rather than having to rely on messy hacks.

          Of course, this is also a slightly bigger issue than the original post mentions. I should probably create a new post for what I’m talking about.

            MattRegions
            MattRegions
            Aug 16, 2023 8:03 PM UTC

            BIG BUMP…Who doesn’t need this? @Figma_Team is this on the roadmap?

              flauridsen
              flauridsen
              New Participant
              Sep 7, 2023 7:09 AM UTC

              +1

              Coming from Axure the Repeater is one thing I truly miss.

                Jeroen2
                Jeroen2
                Active Member
                Sep 7, 2023 9:32 AM UTC

                +1 for me, too. In this case, coming from XD. I think that a feature like Repeat Grid should allow repetition of any layer on the canvas. Say: you want to repeat a group of elements or a frame. This way, you could select any object inside a component and repeat it.

                As earlier mentioned, there is also a request for a slot feature (arbitrary instance swap in components), where I think that a repeat grid could help big time. If, inside a component, you can repeat an object that happens to be instance-swappable, this could be really nice.

                I do foresee some issues: what if you want to have one component to repeat, but any repeated component is the same variant? I think that the repeat functionality would be most powerful if it ships with the ability to override component properties per repeated instance.

                  matteogonzalez
                  matteogonzalez
                  Sep 14, 2023 7:59 AM UTC

                  I’m a bit scared it add too much complexity tbh

                  Petr_Siroky
                  Petr_Siroky
                  New Participant
                  Sep 23, 2023 9:58 PM UTC

                  I am constantly surprised that there are couple of basic features that I was used to from XD (which otherwise was lacking big time in features) aren’t a thing in Figma.

                  I hope this will eventually get added, it’s really strange how content generation (and overall ease of filling UI with real data) isn’t more prioritized in Figma.

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