portal creating duplicate records

[JamesHunt]

Just diving in here, please excuse if this is an obvious mistake...

I've created 3 tables; 1 event info, 1 occurance of event, 1 contacts. I have 2 portals on the event layout. One displays related occurances of the event, and one displays related contacts for the event, pulling records from the appropriate table. I have the portals set to "allow creation of record" on the corresponding table.

What I want is to enter the data from these portals and have it stored in the related table. This works fine for the occurances of events, because there is only 1 event for every occurance of the event. But for contacts there can be 1 contact for many events, and also many contacts for 1 event.

So I enter the contact in the portal and it creates a contact record. But then I go to the next event. I want to make the same contact also a contact in this event. So I enter the same contact, but it creates a duplicate record in the contact table. I want it to realize the contact is already in there and just add a second event to the contact record. Does that make sense? But the tables are linked thru an eventID, so it doesn't find a match for the new event id and creates a new record.

I tried making a join table that holds an eventID and a contact ID, so each contact could be related to multiple eventIDs, but the same thing happened.

Sorry for such a long post, but if you can help I would really appreciate it!

[Genx]

... its a bit round about.. but assuming you want to choose by event or contact names ... this is the only way i can see of doing it... if anyone comes up with something better ... its a fairly curious question so feel free to post

genx

file.zip

[JamesHunt]

great! it mostly works. I'm not sure I understand what is going on, could you explain it to me? I see the join table has some calculations. I don't get what the create and serial lookup tables are for? The only other thing is, I want to be able to create a new contact record by entering a name that does not exist in the drop down box on the event layout. Is this as simple as allowing creation of records thru the join table>contacts2 relationship?

Edited February 19, 2006 by Guest

[Genx]

.. no the contact wont add this way... id try work out a way for you but ive got my own problems and my brain is to tired to try to twist itself around your solution at the moment, sorry.

the purpose of the auto enter calcs is that... not all information can be added when adding the record...

i.e. if you add a person through the portal on the events layout, the only info that will add is the event id and the contacts name... your missing two vital pieces of information here, the event name and the contact id.. so these are looked up... in the same way when you enter an event to a contact only the contact id and the event name will be added... so the contact name and the event id need to be looked up... hope this helps...

finally, the split you see in the relationships graph isnt exactly correct... the two table occurances on the left are used for creating the records in the join table and the layouts... however they like the ones to the right of the table are ALSO for auto entering info (lookingup)up info...i.e. names vs. serials

~genx

[Genx]

p.s. what do you mean when you say it "mostly works"?