Custom Action Output Not Showing for Location Property

If you've set up a Custom Action that returns location data and you're trying to use the Output to update a Location property in an Update or Create action, you may notice your Output doesn't appear in the magic text picker. There's no error, just no option to select.

This is because a Location property stores a complete address (the kind you get by picking a place on a map), including the full address text, the city, the region, the country, and the coordinates all bundled together as one piece of information. Custom Action Outputs are limited to simple value types like Text, Number, True/False, Date, and Date-only, so they cannot return that complete address bundle. Because the Location property only accepts a complete address, no Custom Action Output will appear as a choice for it.

Resolution

A Custom Action Output cannot directly update a Location property, so you'll need to use one of the following approaches depending on what you're trying to do:

1. Store the latitude and longitude in two Number columns.

   • Use this if all you really need are the coordinates (for example, you're tracking GPS data or pulling from a sensor).

   • Add two Number properties to your collection called Latitude and Longitude, set up two Number Outputs on your Custom Action, and use them to fill in your Number columns in the Update or Create action.

2. Update the Location property through Adalo's Collections API.

   • Use this if you actually need a real Location property (for example, to drop a marker on a Map component or filter records by distance).

   • Your Custom Action can kick things off, but the actual update has to come from a service that builds a complete address from your data and sends it to Adalo's API directly. This usually requires a 3rd party integration to call the Google Places API. See the Collections API help doc on Location properties for a full walkthrough.

3. Save the address into Text columns instead.

   • Use this if you just need to display or search the address but don't need Map components or distance filters.

   • Add Text properties for the parts of the address you care about (such as Full Address, City, Region, and Country), set up matching Text Outputs on your Custom Action, and use each one to fill in its column.

Still Need Help?

If you would like to take a further look at the capabilities of Custom Actions, we will highly recommend you to take the Custom Actions Course from The Adalo App Academy.

If you need additional help with this article, you can always ask in our community forum! Be sure to paste the link to this article in your post as well!