Out of Curiosity, Is it possible in a lookup to have a random placement

[hownow]

By this I mean

 

If I had a sentence.

 

" I love the color  .........."

The relationship word is color

but the possible answers might be

red, blue, green , yellow orange white , maroon.

 

Can this be done somehow?

 

The lookup may have a random answer within a list...

 

Not sure what call this.

 

 

 

 

[Chuck]

I'm not absolutely sure what you're trying to do. I think you want to select a random record from another table. If that's the case, here's how I would probably do it. I'm going to work with a Sentences table and a Colors table.

 

Create a cartesian product relationship between the two tables. This relates all of the records in one table to all of the records in the other table. Normally you create a equals relationship where the match fields must equal each other and the symbol in the popup menu between the match field selection lists is an equal sign. For a cartesian product relationship the match fields don't really matter and you select the "x" symbol in the popup menu. See http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5463/~/using-the-cartesian-product-relationship-in-filemaker-profor more information about it.

 

Now that you have the cartesian product relationship, you can create a calculation that will, from Sentences, choose a random record's field's contents in Colors:

Let(
  [
    _count = Count(Colors::id);
    _random = Int( Random * _count ) + 1
  ];

  GetNthRecord( Colors::color; _random )
)

Check out http://sixfriedrice.com/wp/creating-random-numbers-in-filemaker-pro/for a nice custom function that'll do a better job at generating random numbers.

 

Thanks,

Chuck

[comment]

Check out http://sixfriedrice.com/wp/creating-random-numbers-in-filemaker-pro/for a nice custom function that'll do a better job at generating random numbers.

 

FYI, FMI have fixed the Random function so that in can no longer return 1. That was waaaaaay back in v10.0v3.

[Chuck]

FYI, FMI have fixed the Random function so that in can no longer return 1. That was waaaaaay back in v10.0v3.

 

Thanks for the information. I was unaware of that.

[hownow]

I don't quite get it. I made a file with a drop down box and a relationship to see if there is a way to do this with random birds of the same name. If you try to place a bird name you will always get the same lookup.

I am trying to get a random of the same bird, as in the example i am uploading

Can someone help me get this right with this file.

Thanks

 

Birds for FMFORUM RANDOM.fmp12.zip

[doughemi]

See if this helps.

 

A technique for creating the conditional bird serial numbers can be found here.

Birds for FMFORUM RANDOM_doughemiMod.fmp12.zip

[hownow]

Thank you so much