Adding Child Record...Need Foreign Key

[blakec]

I'm in the midst of my 30-day A5 freebie and am trying to do something simple - add a new child record to a simple 1:M relationship.

The 1:M is Accounts->Contacts. I have an account grid with a linked content section containing a contact grid. When inserting a new contact record I need to identify and assign the foreign key the new contact will be linked to. How do I do this?

I suspect there may need to be a some XBasic written in the correct event to hold the account id in a variable so it can be assigned at time of insert...or something like that.

I searched the forum for adding child records and have been reading posts and watching some videos, but have not been able to do this very simple thing. Sorry if I missed something.

Also, there's so many ways to get things done with A5. It would be nice to have some direction on best practices from the senior A5 devs out there, especially for very common needs like this one.

Thanks for any help on this.

[blakec]

Re: Adding Child Record...Need Foreign Key

Nothing? Is the question too n00b to answer?

Would appreciate any helpful comment.

Thanks

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: Adding Child Record...Need Foreign Key

It's not clear whether you're talking about a web app, or a desktop app.

On the desktop side of the house this sort of thing is handled automatically when using set based forms. You can also pass field values to called forms in code. Examples in Code Archive forum of this message board.

[blakec]

Re: Adding Child Record...Need Foreign Key

Ah. Yes that's true.

A5 web app


Thanks...

[TaiTai]

Re: Adding Child Record...Need Foreign Key

Have you tried building the grid for the contact screen.

Then using the "Has Linked Grids or other content" function (Grid - Properties) on your Account grid definition.

This allows you to define links between the key fields from the accounts to contacts grids.

Also: have you had a look at the nice videos http://news.alphasoftware.com/V10Preview/videos.htm
Especially numbers 29, 35 and 65.

[blakec]

Re: Adding Child Record...Need Foreign Key

@TaiTai -

Thanks for the reply.

From my original post: "I have an account grid with a linked content section containing a contact grid".

I am already making use of the linked content section. Navigating and updating the 1:M is not the problem. My question is how to make available the foreign key back to the Account record when trying to ADD a new child Contact record.

[nlk10010]

Re: Adding Child Record...Need Foreign Key

@TaiTai -

Thanks for the reply.

From my original post: "I have an account grid with a linked content section containing a contact grid".

I am already making use of the linked content section. Navigating and updating the 1:M is not the problem. My question is how to make available the foreign key back to the Account record when trying to ADD a new child Contact record.

OK, I've needed to do this as well. I understand that it's not working for you but perhaps you could tell us what the database looks like.

Are the tables DBF or something else (e.g. MySQL, SQLServer)? Is the parent key autoincrement? What do the keys on the children look like?

I have an autoincrementing integer primary key on my master table and, via linked grids for the children, Alpha5 takes care of all the CRUD operations EXCEPT when I'm adding. In that case, if your operator doesn't save the master record then there is no primary key to assign to the children (this of course would not be an issue if your master key isn't autoincrement). In that case what I've done is to disable the addition of children until the master record is saved. Once the save is performed I enable the child grid for additions and Alpha5 automatically inserts the foreign key.

HTH.