A type of portal i have not seen before.

[ibiubu]

I came across a portal use that I have not seen before. I was hoping someone could shed some light on it.

The first step is pretty straight forward. There is a portal that show 5 different line items (5 different related records). At the beginning of each line is a button. Now normally if I was doing this the button would have a script, click on the button and it would open up the related database and go to the related record.

This button did it a bit differently. Clicking on the button stayed apparently stayed within the same database file, went to a different layout, and showed a larger portal with 20 or so fields of detail for just that record.

I can't quite figure out how the button/script works so that no matter which line of the portal you click on, it shows that record in a new layout in a larger portal.

Hope how I am explaining this makes sense. Anyone have any thoughts?

LR

PS...on the subject of the "go to related record" script, is there a way to also include shich layout in the related record to go to.

[Kurt Knippel]

It works in the exact same way as you expected, it is just that the "related file" is in fact the same DB. Filemaker supports self relationships as do pretty much all RDBMSs, it is just that most people do not think of self relationships in the same way.

[LiveOak]

I believe what you are saying is that clicking the button takes you to a layout which shows more fields for a single related record. This is accomplished with an additional relationship probably based upon a global field (left side of relationship). Clicking the button sets the global field to, say, the record ID of the related record (SetField(GlobalKey, OriginalRelationship::RecordID)). You are then taken to a layout populated by fields GlobalKeyBasedRelationship::field1, GlobalKeyBasedRelationship::field2, GlobalKeyBasedRelationship::field3, ...

Are you sure the second layout shows a portal? A portal isn't really need to display more field for a SINGLE related record and why would clicking on one related record bring up another portal with multiple related records?

-bd

[ibiubu]

Brent,

I think your asumption is correct. Geez, not this is some heavy stuff. Just when I thought I had portals and relationships down. I am not quite sure I completely follow, so I think I am goint to have to set up some dummy database files and give what you said a try.

Thanks.

LR