Going from General Portal to Specific Portal on Same Layout

[Withan]

To allow entry of different types of products into the same inventory table from the same parent (one invoice from a supplier), I have created multiple portals to the inventory table: (Diamonds, Emeralds, Rubies, etc.), each on a different tab. Also on the same layout, I have a simple portal that shows all the items, regardless of type, so the user can see all entries in a list.

What I want to do is be able to place a button in the general portal that will then open the appropriate tab and go to the correct portal row for that item.

I've got the first part, through an If-Else If-Else If structure, with Goto Object and named tabs. But whenever I try to go to a field in the portal (using the correct relationship!) so I can loop to the right portal row, it goes back to the general portal.

Script_I.pdf

[Withan]

Okay, as I do about 50% of the time when I post a problem, I solved it myself right after writing!

I gave an object name to the first field of each of the specific portals, and went to that. Then everything worked.

This may be the only reliable way to go between portals with scripts in FMPro 9.

[comment]

You could simply give an object name to each portal. But I cannot help wondering if it really takes 4 pages of script to go to a specific portal row. I'd think a simple:

Go to Object [ "Some Portal" ]

Go to Portal Row [ By Calculation... ]

would be enough - with the calculation returning the position of the related record's ID in a list of all ID's shown in the portal.

Come to think of it, why do you even need multiple portals, if only one of them is shown at a time - couldn't one portal filtered by a global achieve the same?

But most of all I wonder why would anyone want to move from a row in one portal to essentially the same row in another portal. Does information about a specific diamond become more meaningful when it's surrounded by other diamonds records only? I would expect clicking on a portal row to take me to a more detailed view of the clicked item in isolation.

[Withan]

Each Portal has different fields in different orders with different buttons. For instance, their is no color or clarity for a pearl, but it has type, nature, etc. Also some fields need different value lists. To enable easy entry for the type of inventory, different portals were necessary with different fields.

The second portal gives an overall list, to allow the user to see everything that has been entered in that batch of items. If the user needs to add or correct something, he can go from the general portal to the specific. I guess I could have named the portal, but it would have been about the same.

I do find myself doing things the FM5 and FM4 way some of the time, but usually because that was offers more control and specificity.