Explode and implode with pages

When you're building end-to-end apps with Tines pages, explode and implode become essential tools for creating a complete user experience. Here's how they work together to turn a simple workflow into a full-fledged application.

App-building pattern 

Pages let users submit data through web forms. When a user fills out a page with looping containers (like adding multiple assets to track or submitting several incidents at once), that page outputs an array of items. This is where explode and implode come into play.

After a user submits the page, you use explode to break that array into individual events. This allows your workflow to process each item separately, enriching data, making API calls, applying conditional logic, or performing calculations on each entry independently.

Once each item has been processed, implode collects all those individual results back into a single, organized array. Now you have a complete dataset of processed information that you can send to another page to display results back to the user.

Why this matters 

Without explode and implode, you'd be limited to processing entire arrays at once, which makes it difficult to handle individual item logic, error handling, or conditional branching. With them, you can build apps where users submit multiple items, they get processed individually behind the scenes, and receive structured results; all through a clean, web-based interface.

This pattern transforms Tines from a workflow tool into an application platform. Users interact with pages on the front end, while explode and implode handle the behind-the-scenes orchestration that makes each item's journey through your workflow feel seamless and purposeful.

Explode and implode page example workflows 

Search and display results 

Ideal when an API returns a list requiring further processing:

Page 1: Search criteria
    ↓
HTTP Request action (returns a list)
    ↓
Explode results
    ↓
Enrich each result (HTTP Request action per-item)
    ↓
Implode all enriched items
    ↓
Page 2: Display enriched results

User intake and provide summary 

Great for pages with multi-select elements:

Page 1: Pick 1+ items
    ↓
Explode selected items
    ↓
Check or transform each
    ↓
Implode processed set
    ↓
Page 2: Confirmation screen

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