Displaying concatenated portal data or portal on printout

[kiwiora]

Hi,

I'm trying to get information from a portal into a printout.

Table 1 (T1) - File Information

Table 2 (T2) - Notes (Date & Note field)

T1 has a portal where users can enter data into T2. T1 will NOT always have records in T2. (Hence I cannot print the data from the T2 table)

I need to print out a report from table T1 showing concatenated data from related T2 using a value list of related records then a field

ValueListItems ( Get(FileName) ; "Notes" )

This works fine with the exception that the records in the field do not sort by date order.

I tried using a portal on screen and locking it to the bottom of the screen so it will stretch. The portal will add/delete rows as appropriate, but it won't resize the portal itself.

See attached file as an example as to what I'm trying to explain :

Also, I can get it to sort if I use getasnumber(date), but of course I don't want this displayed.. :S

TIA

test.zip

Edited October 23, 2008 by Guest

[Søren Dyhr]

This works fine with the exception that the records in the field do not sort by date order.

Use List( instead of ValueListItems( and make the sorting required by the relations definition instead. However is there great inspiration to be found in this:

http://fmcollective.com/2007/08/29/pseudoportals-with-alternating-fill/

...When printing is required!

--sd

[kiwiora]

Thanks!

I'm not quite sure why I felt I needed to use value list.. I got shown that technique once and ...hmm

So, is there a valid reason as to where you would use the value list technique in favour of the list?

Cheers

[comment]

Your report would be much easier to produce from the child table, with parent fields in a sub-summary part.

As for ValueListItems(): there was no List() function until version 8.5. You can still use it when you want to eliminate duplicates, but it will always sort ascending according to the field type.

[kiwiora]

Thanks.

I don't believe I can produce it from the child table because the parent may sometimes be barren (i.e no notes records).