Importing linked data

[Fabio]

I wish to import my Access relational databases into the wonderful TapForms on my iPad. However, linking imported forms using the values in a record seems still impossible. In a former topic, you suggested: ” You would simply navigate to the linked record / field, then use the Import Records command from there. ” Ok, but my parent forms (usually bibliographic entries) have 6,000-10,000 records, and each record has dozens of linked records(i.e. citations for each biblio entry). I cannot navigate to each parent record… Considering this is the main utility of any relational database, I wonder if there is a workaround, or if this feature will be added to a next version; in a contrary case I find TapForms amazing for creating new databases, but useless for using existing databases… I hope I am wrong! Thanks in advance

[Brendan]

Hello Fabio,

Ya, it’s unfortunately a difficult thing to do to link up data from an external database source. If you were to export a parent form which had linked records, you could see the format of the CSV file that gets generated. Select the Export Linked Records function. You’ll see a bunch of columns in the child forms which tell Tap Forms how to re-link things back up if you import the file back. The benefit is that you can import the file directly into the child form without having to visit the child form’s records from the parent form’s records.

So if you can modify your data file to mimic that format then you should be able to import your data more easily.

You would have to use Tap Forms’ unique field IDs that get generated into the child CSV files, but you can use whatever record IDs that make sense to link your data together. Just make sure you import into the parent form first.

Sorry if this response isn’t very helpful for you.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Fabio]

Thank you for your prompt answer. It shouldn’t be too difficult to reconstruct such a csv file. I did not think about this solution before, so your response is very helpful for me.
In any case, I hope you will think about the possibility of linking two forms based on a selected record; I imagine this is not an easy task. Best regards, Fabio

[emilyjem]

If anyone else has problems, here is a step-by-step guide that MAY make things clearer:

1) Import the parent CSV to a form
2) Import the child CSV to a form
3) Add a Link to Form field to the Parent form (that links to the Child form)
4) Link 1 child record to a parent record (to get the correct parent_field_id when exporting)
5) Export the Parent form to a zip file
6) Export the Child form to a CSV
7) Open the child CSV that was exported with the Parent form
8) Open the child CSV that was exported by itself
9) Copy the parent_form_id and parent_field_id into the exported child CSV from the other child CSV (step 7) – same value for every row
9) Add the correct parent_record_id to each line of the exported child CSV, based on your original key (Excel formula or similar)
10) Make sure you leave the form_record_id in the exported child CSV intact
11) Delete all existing records in the Child form
12) Import the exported child CSV into the Child form

Hope this helps – took me a couple of hours to nut this out.

[1Levite]

Kudos to emilyjem for taking time to detail the steps for combining parent & child forms via a re-import. This was a huge timesaver for linking 300 parent records to 10000 child records. A few notes that may be useful

In the first step 9 I expected to see a parent_form_id and parent_field_id column in the data from the child form from Step 6, and was a little puzzled at first. My version of step 9 is: insert 3 columns to the right of the form_record_id and insert parent_form_id, parent_field_id, and parent_field_id in the first row of the data from Step 6

In the second Step 9 I did a VLOOKUP to the parent form to extract the appropriate ID.

Only thing I couldn’t figure out is how to assure that the child Form remains with the correct category. In each case I lost the Category assignment and had to re-define.

[Author]

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