Formatting multiple value fields for output

[khigh]

Greetings all,

I'm a rank noob - been at FM (and RDMS) only about three weeks, and I'm making great progress, but the last week or so has been trying to figure out one thing. I THINK I'm missing a key word or term in what I'm searching for, because it's got to be insanely easy and I'm just not getting there...

I have a an inventory field called "Features" that uses a value list and displays as a checkbox entry.

The item can have multiple values in the field, say "Feature 1, Feature 3, Feature 17, Feature24". The entry is fine.

The problem is trying to format those values individually. I've tried several different incarnations of calculated fields and references tables and whatnot. Ultimately I'd like to see a field that reads something along the lines of "Feature 1

Feature 3

Feature 17

Feature24", but I'm just not getting there.

I've got several books here and done online searches. I have a feeling that I'm searching wrong for what I want, because I keep asking about "formatting output for multiple value fields".

I'd appreciate any pointers, even if it's just a better way to search for what I'm looking for.

Thanks!

[mr_vodka]

Try a calc field with text result of, Substitute ( YourCheckBoxField; ¶; "

" ) but I am not entirely sure what the purpose of this is.

[khigh]

Yep! That's it exactly. That's a huge step forward for me. Thank you so much.

As to the why, ultimately I have to write an entire "static" web page to a single field in a CSV. That part is non-negotiable and not my idea (before anyone says it's stupid).

[khigh]

Oh MAN

That was such a great help and now I broke it. Once again I think it's the terminology of what I'm searching and studying on that's eluding me.

Some of the possible "features" in the checkbox field are rather wordy, so I wanted abbreviations.

I did this (possibly wrong?) by setting up an abbreviation table with "FeatureShort" and FeatureLong" to translate the abbreviations.

Needless to say, multiple selections of the main table input don't pass to the Feature Abbreviation table, and only the first value is passed.

I've already come up with the "long way" of coming up with every possible feature set and translating it in the Feature abbreviation table, but that doean't sound right either.

I KIND of hope I'm missing something at the "you don't need a second table to translate input values" level. Surely shorthand entries are a feature of a large percentage of DBs and I'm missing the way to handle it.

Thanks again for any pointer in the right direction.

[comment]

Try:

List ( Features::LongDescription )

This assumes you have a relationship between Items and Features, matching Features (checkbox) field in Items to the short description (or preferably, ID) in Features.

[khigh]

List ( Features::LongDescription )

That's it! thank you very much.

Then when I run that field through the substitute calc given above, I get the exact field I need.

Thanks again,

Kevin

[comment]

I don't know what you're planning to do with this, but maybe you should look at the GetAsCSS() function, and/or exporting to HTML via XML (there are some examples of this in the application's Extras folder).