Printing related records - containers

[Matt Malyschko]

I have a table - Equipment

 

There is a child table - Equipment Photos, that may contain 0 or more (up to about 5 or 6 generally, but sometimes more!) photos for each equipment.

 

I want to print all equipment items, and for each item show ALL of the related photos, in a thumbnail. I've used single row portals to try and get this going, but it is limited by the number that I set up, and then it will always leave space for this many items, even if the equipment has none.

Does anyone have some suggestions on how best to achieve this?

[Matt Malyschko]

Figured it out - used columns and printed based on the Photos table instead of the Equipment table.

[LaRetta]

I want to print all equipment items, and for each item show ALL of the related photos

 

I suppose you realise this I thought I should mention it.  When you print from the child table, you will not have a record for a piece of Equipment without a single photo.  IOW, FM cannot natively generate left outer join.

 

So if you need to include all equipment, you will need another approach such as temp table.

[comment]

I've used single row portals to try and get this going, but it is limited by the number that I set up, and then it will always leave space for this many items, even if the equipment has none.

 

Actually, that's not quite so: you can set a portal to slide up and close the empty rows. However, you must still set the portal to the maximum expected number of rows (or use the maximum expected number of single-row portals - though I don't think that's the best approach) - and there are also issues with how portals print across page breaks.

[Matt Malyschko]

Actually, that's not quite so: you can set a portal to slide up and close the empty rows. However, you must still set the portal to the maximum expected number of rows (or use the maximum expected number of single-row portals - though I don't think that's the best approach) - and there are also issues with how portals print across page breaks.

How would you suggest to do this? With a temporary table?

I suppose you realise this I thought I should mention it.  When you print from the child table, you will not have a record for a piece of Equipment without a single photo.  IOW, FM cannot natively generate left outer join.

 

So if you need to include all equipment, you will need another approach such as temp table.

Thanks for your response LaRetta.

I had overlooked this issue - silly me.

I'll mess around some more!

[Matt Malyschko]

Working pretty much perfect now!