Prevent duplicate records in a portal

[lgaray]

Hello:

I would like to know how to prevent duplicate records in a portal. For example, if I enter an item#, and in the next row I enter the same item#, how do I copy the data from the current row into the previous row?

Thanks,

Larisa.

[LiveOak]

I would probably enter the new row data into global fields rather than directly into the portal. With the press of an "Enter" button to submit the data, the script triggered could check for to see if that item number already existed. -bd

[Chuck]

You can also do this with a technique that ensures that two fields together are never the same. Given what you're doing, for instance, you probably have an invoice file and a products file, each of which has an ID field, Invoice_ID and Product_ID.

Create a field in Invoice_LI that is called something like Invoice_ID|Product_ID that is set to be an auto enter calculation of Invoice_ID & Product_ID. You want to make sure that this field is unique for all records in the Invoice_LI database. Click on the Validation tab for this fields options and click on the Is Unique field, with perhaps strict and custom message options also. This should work if you have the portal in Invoices that looks into Invoice_LI allow the creation of related records, since as soon as you enter a line item with a product id, a record would be created in the line items file that fills in botht the invoice id from the current invoice and therefore the Invoice_ID|Product_ID field with the two numbers.

You might have to refine this a bit, but experiment with this idea. I know I've used something similar, but I remember that I had to tweak the idea before it worked.

Chuck