looking for a scripting solution...

[Byron Morton]

I'm new to scripting in FMP and I'm having a hard time figuring this out. I'm working on a database to track meeting attendees - each attendee has a record in the main database with a unique ID number and a Yes/No field to track whether they attended.

What I am trying to do is construct a related database (related to main db by ID number) where I can dump the ID numbers from the people who have shown up and have a script match up the ID numbers with the main database and change the value in a Yes/No Attended field in the main database.

Has anyone seen an example of something like this out there on the web or can anyone offer any suggestions on how to go about scripting this?

Many thanks in advance,

Byron

[comment]

If you have a related table tracking attendance, then you're pretty much done: the people who attended are those who have a related record in the Attendance table. There's no need to duplicate this information in the People table as well.

What's more, if this information is written to the People table, what about the next event? The classic way to do this is with 3 tables: People, Events and a join table of Attendance. The Attendance table needs only two fields: PersonID and EventID, and it has a record for every person-attended-event occurance. This way you can track any number of people attending (or not) any number of events.

[Byron Morton]

thanks Comment,

that makes perfectly good sense. i was setting this up for an event my wife volunteers for and wasn't thinking too long term.

i've added barcodes to the namebadges and plan to have a couple of people stationed at the doors to scan folks as they come in and return the scanners to the database to do a dump. i'll take a look at working on a way to process the data dump in the Attendance table.

any feedback is appreciated.

many thanks,

-byron

[comment]

If you preset the EventID (for example in a global field, with the EventID field in Attendance set to auto-enter the global field), you can import your scan file/s directly into the Attendance table, and be done (assuming the scan file is return separated).