Relationships and Searches

[Andy O'Neil]

I feel as though I'm asking to be spoon-fed, but here goes:

I have one week experience with FMP. Look up the word beginner in the dictionary and you'll see a picture of me in a few select dictionaries.

I am trying to make a movie database similar to the way IMDB works.

So far, I have three tables: , [Person], and [MoviePerson]. The tables and [Person] have unique serial id numbers to distinguish people from people and movies from movies.

[MoviePerson] is the middle table that creates a relationship between a person and a movie. I did this so that one person could have multiple roles in one movie. I.E. M. Night Shyamalan produced, wrote, and directed several of his films.

Problem:

I am trying to facilitate data entry with the tables that i have. If i view the table in form view and try to specify the director of a film, i have to sort through all of my people via their ID number and name in a single field in a portal. I would much rather be able to type in a little bit of the name and have the field filter out what i want regardless of the ID number.

I.E. if i go to the record "Batman" and type "Kea" in the person field, I would want the [Person] record (Keaton, Michael) to show up in the field. I don't even want to see the ID number; the id number's there just to make the records unique.

If achieving what i want requires scripts, i know very little about this. I would appreciate a well conceived response if you have the patience. Please ask questions if you have any.

Thanks,

Andy O'Neil

[KurtW]

Well, as far as structure goes, check out the thread: 'Relationship Model' in this forum. Fenton may be able to shed some light on all this for you, and there's even examples to downlaod.

As far as the typing a partial name goes, that feature is called 'Type Ahead' and FM7 does not include it, natively. There are, however, at least two plugins available to do it. I have them at home but am at work so can't give you more info. Try a Google search for 'Filemaker plugin type ahead' and see what you get.

They both cost a bit of $ (around $20 if I recall), and one seems to be much better than the other (per the demo), but honestly I have not loaded either one yet. Been too busy.

Kurt

[Ugo DI LUCA]

Hi and Welcome to the Forum.

Type-Ahead feature is not nativaly included with the latest shipment of FileMaker. You'd have the plug-ins as referred to you by Kurt, or you can open another Window with a Filtered Relationship, mimicing Type-Ahead.

Do a search here on the Sample section for "Clairvoyance" or "Type-Ahead" and you'd find a few, made with prior versions, which you can use, even if less dynamic than the ones marketed, specially the one from Ray Cologon, AKA CobaltSky, a member of this Forum.

See you, enjoy FileMaking

[Fenton]

I have 2 or 3 files in the Sample section that do something like this. Some do more than just choose a person, some are optimized for Instant Web Publishing. The simplest one, which just finds people in regular FileMaker is here:

http://www.fmforums.com/threads/download.php?Number=122273

It's a popup portal. A little different from pure "clairevoyance," where the names appear near the cursor. Perhaps not as elegant, but just as useful, with the size, appearance and data pretty much up to you. No plug-in's, or even much advanced programming needed; but a little :-]