Referencing records referenced by a portal

[DBurnette]

First, This is my first post here, but I've used filemaker off and on for a few years, mostly for simple things, and mostly personally. I'm working on a project now which is a bit larger than stuff I've done in the past.

Second, apologies for what is probably a fairly simple question. The problem I have is that I don't know what direction to look to experiment with a solution. Anyway, my question:

I have a table "songs" and a table "albums", both with layouts. I have a join table to facilitate a portal on the 'albums' layout to list songs that are to be used in that album. That's done and working swimmingly.

I would like to be able to show which album(s) use a song, on the layout for the 'song' records. I'm not sure how to approach this in a simple fashion.

How do I reference which records are using a record via a portal? or is that even the right way to think about it? Is there some blindingly simple solution that I'm going to laugh at myself for not seeing?

I appreciate any tips or pointers...Hopefully I can get to the point where I'm able to contribute, not just ask here.

[Fitch]

Did you try using the same join table portal?

[DBurnette]

When I use a portal in the 'songs' layout to reference anything in the join table, the portal is blank.

Part of the problem is that I've very, very rarely used portals before, so this is new territory for me. I'm not sure if the field in the portal needs to have some type of script or what to display the information.

[comment]

See if this demo can help:

http://www.fmforums.com/forum/showpost.php?post/246136/

[DBurnette]

Thanks for the demo,

That's basically the database setup I had implemented. I'm just not sure how to create something that tells me which 'album' record portal is referencing a 'song' record.

[comment]

Perhaps I don't understand the question. In the demo, there is a portal on the layout of Contacts (Songs) showing the organizations (albums) in which the contact (song) is listed.

Conversely, on the layout of Organizations (Albums) there's a portal showing the contacts (songs) belonging to the currently viewed organization (album).

Isn't that what you need?

[DBurnette]

I must apologize...I didn't see how the portals interacted with the date at first. I took a closer look at the portals, and it does look to be what pretty much I need.

Thanks much, I'm (slowly) getting up to speed on portals.

Now I'm just trying to implement it...But that shouldn't be too hard/

[bruceR]

I must apologize...I didn't see how the portals interacted with the date at first. I took a closer look at the portals, and it does look to be what pretty much I need.

Thanks much, I'm (slowly) getting up to speed on portals.

Now I'm just trying to implement it...But that shouldn't be too hard/

Don't forget to look at the tutorial that comes with FileMaker; they address many of these concepts there.

[DBurnette]

Thanks for the tips and examples. I got it working exactly how I wanted it.

...Now to work through some tutorials (and the missing manual) and close the other gaps I have.