How to use looping (recursive) workflows in Bubble.io

Recursive, or looping, backend workflows is a powerful technique in Bubble which mimics the concept of a loop in traditional computer programming. You can use them to create, update, or delete large amounts of data in your database while maintaining control over the process.
In this video I do a rather long-winded analogy about Christmas cards before showing you how to use recursive workflows to create a number of things in the database, and then subsequently update them.
00:00 Introduction and a real-life analogy
01:50 Explaining the concept with an animated diagram
05:05 Creating a list of things
12:15 Updating a list of things
19:40 Examples of when I use recursive workflows
21:20 Adding a notification when the workflow has finished
23:50 How to cancel a recursive workflow if you accidentally make an infinite loop
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[@kipyegonkurgat5615]

The clarity in this was top notch thanks. you earned yourself a subscriber

[@artemselifanov]

Thanks a lot, waiting for much more

[@Lekkerman]

Excellent video with a good example that can be used in many cases plus giving best practices. Thx for this great content.

[@POLOIN]

Excellent!!!! Thanks a lot

[@gdmt]

This is exactly what i need! Except what im currently working on is a ticket purchase system. For example, i have 4 tickets under the same category which is priced at 1000 each totaling to 4000. If the user where to pay 3000, all 3 tickets will be marked sold and leave the last ticket available. So what i plan to do is, keep the flow going (basically keep buying the said ticket/s) until the user's paid amount is 0. I am still figuring this out but hopefully i nail it with your guide.

[@SUDHANSHU934]

Thank you for this amazing tutorial sir ❤

[@nocodelife]

Thank you for this kind comment sir! ❤

[@keystonejesus00]

Exelente video e estudo de caso otimo para entender todo o conceito

[@TheodoreEremin]

@nocodelife Thanks Keiran. It is not obvious to set type of data as a project ;) Would it be possible to create nested loops in bubble?

[@rathishekar2542]

How to do the same if my list data type is not within bubble and from external DB?

[@luc-er8fm]

Thanks for the video. I don't understand why, but I prepared both an example in the style you described and a backend API workflow to save data with my own option sets. I think I did everything right. But there is a problem, no matter what I do, it only creates 10 things, when I run it again, it creates 10 times again. even if the number I specified is 50, it never goes above 10. I would appreciate your help. tnxnx

[@thatQiao]

Nice thumbnail!

[@denis_estimon]

How do I do a loop? When the number is not defined. For example when getting back a list of chapters off a transcript and the number of chapters won’t always be the same.

[@nocodelife]

Assuming you have a way to split the chapters up so a loop is possible in the first place, you would just do a count of the total number of chapters.