Portal Questions

[Brewser]

Hello,

I can't seem to find more info on Portals. I have a couple questions:

1. I have the relationship setup to create new record when the user finishes a line in the portal and hits tab or select a field in the next line they can start the new record in the portal. How can I set this up so the user has to hit a button to create a new record for a portal and not have FM auto create the new record so the user can't do this in error?

2. I have 3 check boxes in a portal row (this is for a card collecting DB), 'own','Trade', & 'Sold'. I would like to change the color of the background for the portal when a user selects one of these buttons. I figured I could do a box in the background and some how code it to do a fill color when one of the checkboxes was selected. The problem is with a portal the record is added right away and there is no need for a save or commit button to run a script when you select a checkbox. I am also not sure how to do a color fill for a field in a script.

3. I would like when the user selects the 'sold' checkbox that it would look at the 'own' & 'trade' checkboxs and make sure they are not checked or uncheck it for the user.

I am a little confused on how to run scripts to do these without a button.

Thanks for the help, I have learned quite a bit from this forum. I can't wait til I can contribute more to others questions.

[RalphL]

1. you can set your relationship so that it does not allow the creation of related records.

2. The color is a calculated container field. Use a case statment to set the color. This a good place to use repeating fields. Make a global repeating container field. Put colors in the reps. Your case statement then sets the container used for the background the proper rep of the global.

3. Make a button with transparent sides the size of the checkboxes. Use these to run the scripts. The scripts can get a little tricky. You have to set the field as if the checkbox was clciked, i.e., if it is checked then it must be unchecked. Checkboxes store the data as a list separated by returns.

[Brewser]

Ralph,

If I turn off the allow the creation of related records, how do I run a script from a button to add a new record to the portal? Does the button have to be in the portal row? I would like the button to be outside the portal, is it possible?

On #3, first off, how do I script it to know that it should only affect this portal row. Then would you add an 'if' statement to say if own = 1, trade =0, and sold =0 and so forth. This is still a bit confusing.

Thanks for the help.

[RalphL]

The button is outside the portal. The script has to store the key field value into a global field. Then go to a layout for the table, create a new record, set the foreign key to value of the global. Return to the original layout. The user can then enter data into the new portal row.

[Brewser]

Ralph,

That worked great. I am still stuck on setting the background color. How do you set the color? I have a field that is set as a calculation field. I tried to set the case as in Case ( own = 1;TextColor("" ;RGB (0;0;255);Available = 1;TextColor ("";RGB (0;255;0);Sold = 1;TextColor(""; RGB ( 255;0 ;0) ) )

I then setup the results as container with 3 repititions. Obviously I don't want to change the text color since there won't be any text. I can't seem to find a function to do a fill color.

What is the secret formula?

Thanks again, I hope I am not a pain ;-)

[Brewser]

Ralph,

No need to reply. I found a good example of this in the 'learning FMP' book. It works great. That is really a cool feature and looks great.