lineitems

[rservis]

Hi, hope you can help me. I have a portal in a orders dbase which shows files from another dbase (films), I have a field which is called film id and a relationship to the films dbase via film id. I want to put in the film id in the portal and it will show all the details of that film in the portal. My problem is I need to add more than one record for a film on an order - I have put a tick in allow creation of related records, but it keeps repeating the last film id that was put in. I have seen it mentioned somewhere that i should use line items but I don't know how to set this up.

Thanks in advance

Roy

[andygaunt]

OK,

the basics of a line items file.

Usually you have as you do an orders database.

This has an id field (auto entered) for each order.

Then you have a line items database.

This also has a field for the order id, but this time not auto entered.

In the orders database, you create a relationship from orders to line items using the id field.

If you allow creation of related records, everytime you add an item in the portal it creates a related record with the order id.

Because the relationship is setup using the id field, that gets entered for every new line item automatically, otherwise the line items wouldn't relate to the orders.

[rservis]

thanks for the swift reply Andy,

I did as you suggested, but the problem I have is the relationship to films not orders. It is basically like having a video film with a barcode number and someone rents that movie and or many other movies. I would like to select many movies for one customer within a portal by typing in the barcode number.

Thanks

Roy

[andygaunt]

OK Roy,

You have a customers db, you have an orders db and you have a film db.

Your film db, is this a list of all you films.

What you want is a line items from the orders db.

Then, you can type in the film barcode in the new line items portal and the rest of the film information is looked up based on the film barcode (id)

This line items is linked ny the orders id, not the film id. So each time they come in you basically create a new order. This will also give you a history you can use for marketing purposes. Maybe an email of movies based on the genre they watch a lot.

The film db is just like a price list then.

Does this help.

If you want to talk, email me your phone number off list.