Conditional Portals?

[Matt_]

Okay, first of all - I apologize if I'm posting this in the wrong area. And second, I've done some searching and I couldn't really find anything that specifically points to what I'm trying to do.

I'm trying to create a solution to create invoices/order bookings. A user would create a new booking, and from the list of items in the inventory, would be able to add them to the booking items.

I'd like the available products to be sorted into categories, and for them to be easily changed later (if necessary). Ideally, this would be something a file tree would be great for... here’s an example of what I’m after…

Stock Items

  ->  Lamps

      -> MSR

	  ->  400W MSR Lamp

      -> Effects

	  -> 4’ UV Tube

	  -> UV Wash – 100W – UV Lamp

      -> Halogen

	  -> 500W HPL – Lamp

All I need is for there to be a quick and easy way for a user to navigate through the levels of categories in order to select a product…

I’ve tried playing with some hierarchy solutions with the +/- buttons, but I wasn’t able to figure out how to integrate it into my solution. If I were to have 2 drop-downs (or even 1 if possible), and they could select the category and then the items would appear on the tblProducts portal, that’d be great! I’m guessing this has something to do with applying conditions on what is displayed and what shouldn’t be shown.

I’m still in the planning stages, but I threw together a quick sample of where I’m at now and a picture of what I’d ideally like. Any help would be appreciated

Thanks

productbrowser.zip

[Genx]

something to do with applying conditions on what is displayed and what shouldn’t be shown.

All portals are conditional. They are based on the relationship from the Table Occurance you are viewing to the Table Occurance that the portal is from.

The above is pretty easy to set up a set up like the below..

Essentially you have:

MainTable

miscInfo

categoryIDFilter

Products

productName

productInfo

productPrice

categoryID

Now you just relate categoryIDFilter to categoryID. Base your main layout on "MainTable", and put a portal on it from the products table occurance (one of the things in the relationships graph thats based on your products Table).

[Matt_]

Awesome! Easy enough...

Now, as far as making it pretty... is there any way for me to have a drop-down formatted like this..

Group 1

  └— Category 1

  └— Category 2

  └— Category 3



Group 2

  └— Category 4

  └— Category 5

I'm sure it's easy.. but I cant seem to wrap my head around how to go at it.

Thanks

[Genx]

I recommend you use two drop downs here for the sake of simplicity. The technique / ahh... term it is known by is conditional value lists whereby the selection in one field narrows down possible selections in the second field.

http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/181645/post/227372/hl/conditional+valuelists/

[Søren Dyhr]

We toyed for some time - with an approach not far from JMO's but still another angle to the issues involved:

http://www.fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/144255/post/144580/hl/geoffrey/

--sd