I got a part number field that have several repetitions. I want to use a variable to save this so that I can show all the descriptions of these parts in a different layout when user click a button.
But I do not know how to use variable to save several values like that. And I do not know exactly how many repetitions for each part number.
Although FileMaker allows for repetition fields and they have some valid behind-the-scenes uses for the database developer, they should NEVER be used for data. As pointed out by others, you should rethink you data structure.
That being said, you can capture the information in repeating fields by specifying which repetition you're interested in. If you have a repeating field named "partNumber" with 10 repetitions, then you can access each of the repetitions by:
partNumber[1]
partNumber[2]
.
.
.
partNumber[9]
partNumber[10]
RepFieldToVar [calculation] =Let($$varName = List(RepeatingFieldName), "")
This puts all repetitions into a return-delimited value list in $$varName.
Incidentally, there are _exceedingly rare_ instances where repeating fields are still useful. I've used them for grid-type schedule layouts that need stored values. But 99.98% of the time the other commenters are right, you can probably do it more efficiently with related records.
Related
Beginner question. I would like to have a value list display only the records in a found set.
For example, in a law firm database that has two tables, Clients and Cases, I can easily create value list that displays all cases for clients.
But that is a lot of cases to pick from, and invites user mistakes. I would like the selection from the value list to be restricted to cases matched to a particular client.
I have tried this method https://support.claris.com/s/article/Creating-conditional-Value-Lists-1503692929150?language=en_US and it works up to a point, but it requires too much entry of data and too many tables.
It seem like there ought to be a simpler method using the find function. Any help or ideas greatly appreciated.
I'm right now experimenting with a nodejs based experimental app, where I will be putting in a list of books and it will be posted on a forum automatically every x minutes.
Now my question is about order of these things posted.
I use mongodb (not sure if this changes the question or not) and I just add a new entry for every item to be posted. Normally, things are posted in the exact order I add them.
However, for the web interface of this experimental thing, I made a re-ordering interaction where I can simply drag and drop elements to reorder them.
My question is: how can I reflect this change to the database?
Or more in general terms, how can I order stuff in general, in databases?
For instance if I drag the 1000th item to 1st order, everything below needs to be edited (in db) between 1 and 1000 the entries. This does not seem like a valid and proper solution to me.
Any enlightenment is appreciated.
An elegant way might be lexicographic sorting. Introduce a String attribute for each item. Make the initial length of the values large enough to accomodate the estimated number of items. E.g., if you expect 1000 items, let the keys be baa, bab, bac, ... bba, bbb, bbc, ...
Then, when an item is moved from where it is to another place between two items, assign a value to the sorting attribute of the moved item that is somewhere equidistant (lexicographically) to those items. So to move an item between dei and dej, give it the value deim. To move an item between fadd and fado, give it the value fadi.
Keys starting with a were initially not used to leave space for elements that get dragged before the first one. Never use the key a, as it will be impossible to move an element before this one.
Of course, the characters used may vary according to the sort order provided by the database.
This solution should work fine as long as elements are not reordered extremely frequently. In a worst case scenario, this may lead to longer and longer attribute values. But if the movements are somewhat equally distributed, the length of values should stay reasonable.
I am working on Access 2007. I have a table with some fields in it. I had created a form from the table and one of the fields of the table is a concatenation of 2 fields from the same table.
There are 2 fields OppNo and Material in the table. I had created a form with these (and others in the table) fields. There is another field OppMat which is blank in the table. However, I had got the data into OppMat field populated as a concatenation of OppNo and Material fields in the form. I am now looking at having the table updated with the data of OppMat from the form to the same corresponding field in the table.
Kindly advise as how I could achieve this.
Thanks and regards,
This might be possible if these cases are met:
The field OppMat ALWAYS has the same structure and you can assure that it does.
Users will not be able or very unlikely to deviate from this structure.
Notably you should use something like Left(), Right(), Mid() and so on. Whatever works best for your structure. You can use the string modifiers: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd789093.aspx
On the other hand I must admit that I am sceptical if your solutions is the best. Here are my reasons:
Users are unpredictable and will continously deviate from your intended way to use the application.
Using the string functions and fixating on one structure makes your code construction inflexible, hard to maintain if changes occur and prone to errors.
The alternatives seem to be better with little drawback.
My suggestions for alternatives:
Use one textbox for each field so that you have two textboxes. You can even position them that way that it almost looks like it is continous text. But not too much otherwise the user will beconfused.
You can add a label that shows your concatenated fields. But for input you use two different textboxes.
Cheers!
A part of my program relies on recording the lengths of roads within my user interface as they are drawn out. As this requires looping , and as I want to be able to keep the name of the list all the data is stored in the same, is it possible to create lists thusly :
set list road-length X
(where X is a counter that is incremented every time a condition is met). Essentially can I tag numbers on to the ends of lists so that I can tell them apart when they need to be read later on in my program?
You can, but it is almost surely the wrong approach. (For one thing, the names will not be global unless you declare them all ahead of time.) Instead, use the table extension, create a global to hold your table, and use the table to map your id numbers to your lists. This will prove much more useful.
Should I store it in a single timestamp/datetime field or separate date and time fields? I prefer to store it as a single timestamp field but I need to know when a user didn't enter a time portion.
How to best store this in the database? I'm using postgresql.
There are definitely reasons why this is a bad idea. There are also reasons why your choices are limited. It's a bad idea because it's a single data item and for the more practical reason that you can't store a timezone if you have two fields.
As mentioned above, nulls are the obvious benefit of using two fields.
You might also want to consider using a single datetime field and storing a flag to indicate whether or not the user entered a time. This could be a boolean flag. However, you will still need to think about how you are going to use this data - entering only a date into a datetime field will lead to a time component being set to midnight. This will have implications in sorting and selection. Additionally, if you are storing timezones, you will have to be very careful when you use the data.
In order to fulfill your requirement of knowing whether or not a time was entered you will need to have two fields. You do not need the second field to be a time though.
The obvious answer is to use two separate fields; then you can use NULL values.
If you choose to use one field you will need to choose a magic time part that signifies "didn't enter a real time", which has the danger of coinciding with a real time (however unlikely).
Also, if you intend to use the date and time part separately often, then it might also be convenient to use separate fields; otherwise you will often need to use selection functions for extracting the relevant part of a field.