Basics of Linking Forms

[Ray Kloss]

I am coming at TapForms after many years using FMP, but my brain has atrophied on relationships.

I am trying to build a database of images and they are linked to the book they come from.
Each image will have only one source Book, each Book may have many images. I created a Form for Books and one for Illustrations/images.

I am not sure I am linking them correctly. Should I be linking the illustrations to the Books with Link to File, or from the Books to Images with one to many? Will that then show up in the main page with will have the illustrations and then on the side, show the book it came from?

Even if you can point me to a video or something to help me conceptualize this. I included the FM relationship file as a pdf, if that is any help.

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[Daniel Leu]

When you create a relationship, there is field that you can click: “Show inverse relationship”. This way, you have the links in both forms.

I usually decide on the type of relationship based on how I intend to use the forms.

Sam create many videos. Maybe one of them is helpful to you: https://www.youtube.com/user/pasamio/videos

[Ray Kloss]

There was nothing there that addressed my issue. But I will look at the other videos that looked interesting.

My endpoint is to have a image that is linked to a specific source. That source may have many images, but the image will only have one source.

I would like to pull data (text) from the source and the specific image (which I assume I can due with a calculation), but the linking is what is confusing me. I would like to have one layout that shows the image, as well as a box showing the source it came from.

[Mike Guilbault]

I’m fairly new at this, but I would use a one-to-many connection from the Books to the images, and as Daniel mentioned, make sure you click the “Show inverse relationship” box.
In your photos form, you will see the Book ‘field’ – click on the check mark to select the book you want to associate with that image. You can also click the check mark from your ‘images’ field in your book form to select the image.

However, if you want to view information in both forms, a many-to-many relationship will show the table on both forms, and then you can select what information you want to see within the table.

The first one-to-many relationship only shows a summary of the information from the other form. The many-to-many relationship will show a table in each form with you being able to select all the information you want to see.

You, of course, will not require the many-to-many, but from what I’ve seen, that’s the only way to see the connecting table in each form.

Hope that makes sense, and maybe Brendan can fill in any blanks or correct me if needed.

[Anonymous]

FMP and TapForms handle relationships a bit differently, so it’s understandable to be rusty after switching. You can use a One-to-Many Relationship:

Go to your Books form.
Click the Relationships tab.
Tap Add Relationship.
In the Related Form dropdown, select your Illustrations/images form.
Choose the One-to-Many relationship type. This ensures each Book can have many Illustrations, but each Illustration belongs to only one Book.
Crucially, check the “Show inverse relationship” box. This creates a link back to the Book within the Illustrations form.

[Brendan]

The steps to create a relationship between forms is accomplished by adding a Link to Form field to your Books form. Then selecting the Images form you want to link to on the Link to Form popup button (Mac) or by tapping on the Link to Form option (iOS).

Then as others have mentioned, enabled the Show Inverse Relationship option. That will allow you to select an individual Image and see the Book it belongs to and on the Books form you can see the list of Images.

But if you don’t need any extra data for each image, you can just add multiple images to a Photo field. Then you don’t need a relationship at all.

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