alphaPlan · Future of Mobile Development · Cheat-sheet 03

Real features

Take real payments with Stripe, build an order screen with a tip, and add a per-trip chat from a collection, a list and an action.

Ideas to remember

01A marketplace is always the same pattern: sellers post items, buyers browse and order, and money moves from the buyer to the seller.
02Adalo has a built-in Stripe Payment component, so you never touch card numbers yourself; Stripe does the sensitive part.
03A Magic Number or a Custom Formula lets the amount change per order instead of being one hard-coded number.
04In a plain Stripe payment the money goes to you; Stripe Connect pays each merchant in a marketplace directly, with an optional platform fee.
05A chat is a list of messages, each with what was said, who said it and which trip it belongs to, plus a box to add one more.
06Chat reuses the three ideas you know: a Messages collection stores the data, a filtered list shows it, and a Create action adds to it.

Trip Cost / Group Size: The classic split formula: the cost per person is the trip cost divided by the group size.
tip default: 20% of the order total, built as a Custom Formula; the card is charged the order total plus the tip.
Magic Text: Dynamic text pulled from the app, such as the merchant's name in the charge description or the logged-in user's email.
Current Trip: The trip a screen was opened from; the message list filters on Trip is equal to Current Trip.
Logged In User: The signed-in person; a new message's Sender is set to it automatically.
Stripe test mode: Fake card numbers so you can build and try the whole flow without charging anyone.

Show the Book Now button only when the trip actually has menu items, so an empty trip does not show a dead button.
Show three numbers clearly on the order screen: the order total, the tip, and the sum of the two.
Store each ordered line in its own collection, such as Ordered Items, with relationships back to the menu item and the order.
Give the send button two actions: Create a Messages record from the text input, Logged In User and Current Trip, then empty the text input.
Test the chat in two browser windows signed in as two different users.

Never paste real card details or live Stripe secret keys into shared screens or a demo project; switch to live keys only when the app is genuinely ready.
Without the filter on Current Trip, the chat screen shows every message in the whole app.
An empty list looks broken rather than new; add a label that shows only when the message count is zero.

Found something unclear, outdated or improvable? Suggest an improvement