Many to One

[Frank Nichols]

I have just purchased Tap Forms for iPad and so far I like what I see, but there is one deal breaker for using it in my application – Many to One relationships.

I have searched the web and this forum and it appears that Many to One is not implemented and is not planned at this time. Is that true?

In my application I have a data structure that really requires that capability – basically a pick list like functionality, except with additional fields in the child form that can be selected/displayed in the parent form.

Tap Forms is excellent, and having both Mac and iOS version makes it a leading contender for my application (the alternative appears to be to write my own, which I would prefer to not do…).

Any chance Many to One relationships and child field displaying could be on the horizon? I could continue developing my application if I could expect this in the next 6 months – if not, I will need to look elsewhere.

Also, in using the Many to Many relationship, I see in the OS X documentation that I should expect the child rows to be displayed on the parent form, this appears to not work on my iPad – is that correct? Having to click the field to get the pop-over to see the selected child properties is not acceptable either.

I hate to come across as complaining – I am very impressed with your application, I just need to get on with developing my project and need to know if I can in fact look forward to being able to use Tap Forms or not.

Thanks,

Frank

[Brendan]

Hi Frank,

If you use a one-to-many Link Type, you can turn on the “Show Inverse Relationship” option on the Link to Form field. That will effectively give you a many-to-one relationship, but in the opposite direction.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Frank Nichols]

Thank you for your quick reply, it is very appreciated. That does work as a One-To-Many relationship.

So, the remaining (at this time :) ) issue I need to resolve is to be able to display field(s) from the child form on the parent form when the child record is selected.

The application I am working on is to allow users to create a product requirement by working through a series of forms and selecting predefined attributes and adding custom attributes. The predefined attributes are available in a series of child forms which are initially populated by me, and can be extended (records added to) by the user. This is a long complex process and it is required that the user be able to “see” their choices as they progress or review the forms that have been filled out.

So, (If I explained that clearly?) what I would like to do is to have the parent form allow them to select from a list of child form values that are predefined (or extended by them, by editing the child form – not during the selection on the parent form). The child values/records would have various attributes associated with each – name, description, value1, value2, value3, etc… When a child record is selected on the parent form, I would like a specified (or by default the first field) field to be displayed on the parent form so that the user can see what choice they made.

As it works currently, it seems, there is an indication that a choice has been made – the number of associated child records is set to 1 instead of 0 – but the choice is not displayed until you click/touch that field on the parent form.

In the Mac OSX documentation it shows the child record(s) displayed on the parent form in a sub-table at that point in the parent form. That would work okay for my application but is not necessary if adding a sub-table field is difficult, all I really need is for the parent field to be filled in with the current contents of the child’s first field, similar to the way the parent field is populated by a Pick List item.

Thank you again,

Frank

[Frank Nichols]

Okay, one more issue and I am off and running – promise – lol – maybe…

I have a recursive relationship in one of my forms. Consider a list of real world people. A person in this list could have multiple fathers and multiple mothers who are also in the list. Those parents could then have multiple children also within the list.

So, a child – me – would have a many-to-many relationship to my father(s), and my father(s) would each have many-to-many (?) relationships with his/their children, including me, in the same form.

I have managed to get this mostly working, except the number of linked records indicates the “wrong” number of links, even though the displayed relatives is/are correct when you click on the field.

However, it seems to not work too pretty well when I add in the mother field. It would appear you have a single reference for the link pointing back to itself which is trying to include both the mothers and fathers linked records.

Anyway, I am sure I don’t know what I am talking about,

[edited]
I have fiddled around and think I have this sort of working now. By setting the father field to be many-to-many and show inverse relationship Tap Forms creates a field named “people” to maintain the reverse relationship. I can rename this field to “father of children” because it links to this fathers children. And it mostly works. Then repeating the process for the mother, set MTM and inverse and renaming new field to Mother of children (or maybe it should be “children I am mother of”) it all seems to work with a single relationship pair ie, one father, mother and child. More testing will follow with multiple fathers, mothers and children.

so, again it would be nice if the father and mothers name would show up in the child’s form…

[Frank Nichols]

BTW: I went ahead and purchased the Mac version tonight, seemed like the least I could do after being so annoying on here :)

Frank

[Brendan]

Hi Frank,

Heheh… you’re not being annoying. Don’t worry about that. I’m happy to help if I can. And thanks for purchasing the Mac version.

Yes, the many-to-many relationship is what you would need. You’re right that with a one-to-many relationship, there is a single back relationship to the parent record.

As for what fields gets displayed from the parent on the child form, it’s just the first X number of fields based on whatever you have set for the “List View Fields” setting. It just replicates the display of a record that you see on the single-column list view.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Author]

Posts