Thanks in advance for your advice!
Background
I’m creating a database to track orders placed by customers.
An ‘Orders’ table stores general details about an order like the customer’s name, order date, and delivery-required date.
A separate ‘Order_Items’ table stores the specific items that the customer has ordered.
The is a one-to-many relationship between the ‘Orders’ table and ‘Order_Items’ table, i.e. one ‘Order’ can have many ‘Order_Items’, but each ‘Order_Item’ must be associated with only one ‘Order’.
Current State
Currently, I have a page where the user creates a new ‘Order’ record. The user is then taken to another page where they can create as many ‘Order_Item’ records as are needed for the order.
Desired State
What I would like to achieve is: When a user creates new ‘Order_Item’ records, it automatically allocates the current ‘Order’ record as the foreign key for the new ‘Order_Item’ record.
What I've Tried So Far
Manual Action By The User: One way of establishing the link between an 'Order' and all of its 'Order_Items' would be to add a drop-down widget which which effectively asks the user something like "Which order number do all of these items belong to"? The user's action would then establish the link between the two tables and associate one 'Order' with many 'Order_Items'. However, my goal is for this step to be handled programatically instead.
Official Documentation: I’ve referred to the offical documentation which was useful, but as I'm still learning I don’t really know exactly what to search for. The prefetch feature appeared promising but does not actually establish a link; it just loads associated records more efficiently.
App Maker Tutorials: I found an App Maker tutorial which creates an HR App where a user can create a list of ‘Departments’, then create a list of ‘Employees’, and then link an ‘Employee’ to a ‘Department’. However, in the example app this connection is established manually by the user. In my desired state I would like the link to be established programatically.
Manual Save Mode:
I’ve also tried switching to manual save mode so that the user has to create a draft ‘Orders’ record and then several draft ‘Order Items’ records and then save them all at once. However, I haven’t managed to make this work. I’m not sure whether the failure of this approach is because 1) I’m try to create draft records on more than one table, 2) I’m just not doing it correctly, or 3) I thought I read somewhere that draft records are deprecated.
Other Ideas
I'm very new to this field and am may be wrong, but I have a feeling I may need to use some scripting to establish the link. For example, maybe I could use a global variable to remember which 'Order' the user creates. Then, for each 'Order_Item' I could use the onBeforeCreate event to trigger a script that establishes the link between the 'Order_Item' and the 'Order' that was remembered from the previously established global variable.
Updated Question
Thanks Markus and Morfinismo for your answers. I have been using both answers with some success.
Morfinismo: I've successfully used the code you directed me to on existing records but cannot seem to get it to work for newly created records.
For example:
widget.datasource.createItem(); // This creates a new record
var managerRecord = app.datasources.Manager.item; // This sets the Manager of the currently selected parent record as a variable successfully.
var teamRecord = app.datasources.Teams.item; // This attempts to set the Manager of the currently selected record as a variable. However, the record that was created in line 1 is not selected. Therefore, App Maker does not seem to know which record this line of code relates to and returns the error Cannot set property ‘Manager’ of null.
// Assign the manager to the team.
teamRecord.Manager = managerRecord; // This successfully assigns the manager but only in cases where the previous line of code was successful (i.e. existing records and not newly created ones).
Do you have any suggestions or comments on how to apply this code to records that are created by the initial line of code in line 1?
I have found the easiest way to create related items for situations such as yours is to actually import a form with the datasource set to Parent: Child (relation) or Parent: Child (relation) (create). So in your case the datasource would need to be set to Order: Order_Items (relation).
You can get this accomplished in two different ways using the form widget wizard:
Option 1:
If your page datasource is set to Order_Items, drag your form on your page.
In the datasource selection section, your datasource in the form widget should default to `Inherited: Order_Items'. Click the 'Advanced' button in the bottom left corner, then from the datasources category find Order as your datasource, then select relations in the next field, and then Order_Items in the next field, choose 'Insert only' or 'Edit' form and then the appropriate fields you want in the form.
Now every item that gets created in that form will automatically be a child record of the currently selected record in your Order datasource.
Option 2:
If your page datasource is set to Order, drag your form on your page.
In the datasource selection section, your datasource in the form widget should default to Inherited: Order. Scroll down in your datasource selection section until you find Order: Order_Items (relation), then choose 'Insert only' or 'Edit' form and then the appropriate fields you want in the form.
Now every item that gets created in that form will automatically be a child record of the currently selected record in your Order datasource.
In your Order model, make sure that the security setting is set appropriately that a user is allowed to create relations of Order_Items in Order. That is the simplest approach in my opinion since you don't have to hard code the parent into your form or client/server scripts. It is automatically based on the currently selected parent, and is essentially doing the same thing that #Morfinismo explained in the client script section.
The comment I placed under your question included a link to the official documentation that explains what you need. Anyways, your question is not clear enough to determine whether you are creating the records via client script or server script, hence this is a very general answer.
To manage relations via client script:
var managerRecord = app.datasources.Manager.item;
var teamRecord = app.datasources.Teams.item;
// Assign the manager to the team.
teamRecord.Manager = managerRecord;
// Changes are saved automatically if the datasource in auto-save mode
// Add a team member to a Manager's team.
// Note: Retrieve Members on the client before proceeding, such as by using prefetch option in datasource - datasources Team -> Members)
var engineerRecord = app.datasources.TeamMember.item;
teamRecord.Members.push(engineerRecord);
To manage relations via server script:
// Get the record for the Team to modify.
var teamRecord = app.models.Teams.getRecord("team1");
// Assign a manager to the Team.
var managerRecord = app.models.EmployeeDB.getRecord("manager1");
teamRecord.Manager = managerRecord;
// Note: The new association is not saved yet
// Assign a team member to the Team.
var engineerRecord = app.models.EmployeeDB.getRecord("engineer1");
teamRecord.Members.push(engineerRecord);
// Save both changes to the database.
app.saveRecords([teamRecord]);
The above information is taken directly from the official documentation, which like I said, I referred to in the comment I placed under your question.
Super simple.
When viewing the list of Custom Forms in Setup, I want to add a column that shows where those Custom Forms are in use (or null if used nowhere).
This is similar in principle to viewing the list of fields, which has a list of forms on which those fields are used.
What is the syntax I can use to add the appropriate column(s) to the view?
As far as I know, there is no linkage in the backend that connects categories (custom forms) to their host objects. This is probably because the list could be massive and the query would take quite a while to execute as it would have to traverse every object in Workfront or each form would store every parent object ID.
Unfortunately, you can't even search for objects by associated category IDs, so if you wanted to build this yourself you would need to query each object and search its categories to see if your custom form appeared.
I have a json array variable defined in my activity workflow definition. Now, I need to present the data of the json array in a datagrid inside a form task. One of those columns should be a check entry filed so that the user may select some rows. After that, I need to get back that data in a subsequent form task (so I need the data to be updated in the json variable so I can read it back, mainly the user selected checks).
Any example to accomplish this? I didnt find almos nothing relating with using datagrids in Alfresco task forms.
thank you!
Miguel
Users modify a DB object in an edit form that I have, pretty straight forward.
I need to implement a 'change log' on this object. I need to record which fields where changed and what they were before and after. I'm using Razor MVC.
I've done this by writing triggers for the table on update/delete. On update/delete of a record, the trigger pushes the record to a History table, in a History database. This creates the change log. Then you would just need to display it; to identify the change would require evaluating each and every field.
There's nothing already built that wold do this for you that I know of.
I am having some difficulties with my module I am currently working on. As part of this module I have created a few fields that appear on a form. This form is based in a custom entity.
First I am using field_create_field($field); to create the row in the field_config table. I am then using field_create_instance($instance); to create the row in the instance table and also create the table that begins with field_data_field.
The problem I am running into is how to remove these tables correctly at the end. I have tried manual deletion (via hook_uninstall), I've tried field_delete_field, I've tried to use the remove_instance hook that is built into the Commerce module. Either way, I end up getting lots of field_deleted_data_xxx tables being created. These don't even have data in them as I created a manual query to empty the main data tables before this function was called that seems to create these tables.
Has anyone else ever run into this problem? How do I stop Drupal from creating these tables??
You can't stop Drupal from creating them but I believe you can rid yourself of them totally using field_purge_batch and its related functions.
I really wish I knew the answer to your second question (in your comment above), my instinct would be that if you re-attach the field to the bundle then that data would become automatically available again (otherwise it really doesn't make sense to keep hold of the deleted tables) but I really can't be sure about that.