User input validation

[Neil879]

Hi,

 

Hopefully I've posted this question in the right place!

 

I'm developing a maintenance database (spares) and have came across an issue regarding data input of items.

 

When a user creates a new record (adding new product) there could be different wording of products entered. For example 'lamp or bulb','box or crate' etc.

What I want is to prevent duplicate naming of items.

I'm thinking possibly some kind of buffer table that would compare say a unique manufacturers id and/or supplier and validate the item name on entry?, meaning if the manufacturer and ID was the same then there would only be a single possible value to enter.

 

Not sure the best way to go about this.

 

Any help/advice would be really appreciated.

 

 

Thanks

 

 

Neil

 

[Steve Martino]

Have you considered to validate those fields by value list? Then you could create value lists (non editable) to cover the possible scenarios.

[Neil879]

I had thought of a value list, but then would the value list not need to be updated when a new record (unrelated) is added? to keep the data consistant.

Say an entirely new item is added to the database, then would the value list not prevent this as the item is not contained in the list ?

 

 

 

[Lee Smith]

Hi Neil,

 

I moved your topic from "FileMaker Pro 12" to "Value Lists” because, the General Topics are for discussion of the new tools, features and functions that were introduced in that version of FileMaker, and not for asking how to questions.

 

Your description of what you want to accomplish fits in the Value List topic.

 

Lee

Edited September 3, 2014 by Lee Smith
added more info

[comment]

if the manufacturer and ID was the same then there would only be a single possible value to enter

 

There are two parts to this: validation at data level and user interface. I will only answer the first one for now:

 

Define a new Text field and set it to auto-enter a calculated value (replacing existing value) =

Manufacturer & "|" & ID

Set this field to validate as Unique.

 

 

This will ensure there can be only one record with the unique combination of Manufacturer and ID - so naturally, there can also be only one unique description of the product.