Pick List selection that provides second pick list based on first selection

[Mike Sturmey]

Hi,

I am building a plant database and want to be able to select the ‘Species’ from a Pick List and then subject to the selection e.g if Epiphyllum is selected, the next field (Genus) will automatically present the Pick List ‘Epiphyllum’ which contains the list of the Epiphyllum genus. Is this possible? I am not proficient in scripting so looking for the simplest solution possible,

kind regards,
Mike

[Sam Moffatt]

You can’t do this via the built in forms but it is available via scripting. I think the tangible feature request is a taxonomy or tree selection field type though I note you’ve posted on the populate pick list field from another field value thread in the Script Talk forum.

[Mike Sturmey]

Many thanks Sam

[Brendan]

I really need to implement this feature natively. It’s probably one of my oldest feature requests.

[Mike Sturmey]

Hi Brendan – how far off would you see this feature being implemented?

cheers
Mike

[doc volt]

To be able to narrow down via two levels of pick list would be a great addition and a much needed one.

Coming from Filemaker background, where this was very useful.

In my case, checking in and hoping to create invoice/tracking system for machine repair.

5 “makes” (mfg) of machine
5 “types”
As many as 25 models under some types.

To list all models from a mfg would be terribly unwieldy, so narrowing by type would help, i.e.

Miller Mig (make & type);
With models to pick:
MM252
MM
MM200
MM141
Mm211
MM212

Etc

Very similar to the plant database idea

Im not a programmer so no idea how to do it. But as a very new user testing this to see if it will be an improvement over a simple legal pad to check machines in, Im hoping for this improvement.

I chose several years ago to use handwritten pad to check in machine and excel to manually create invoices because I did not want to support filemaker’s biz model.

Tapforms is workin well it seems and shows great promise quickly, but this would be very important.

Thank you for the time.

Volt

[Brendan]

I’m currently in the middle of a database engine conversion, so this feature would be a while off I’m afraid. Plus have to think about how this would look inside Tap Forms. How many levels deep can it go? Is it just 2 levels deep as a maximum? Is it eventually a single value stored in the database? Or is it cascading Pick Lists across multiple fields? If so, how do you link them together? What does the Pick List editor screen look like with cascading Pick Lists on the macOS and iOS versions? If you select 3 levels, but then change the first level, do the other two levels get cleared? So lots to think about.

[Sam Moffatt]

I feel it should be an arbitrary depth tree, essentially once you get to a third level you’ve generally solved the problem out to however many levels you need. To do that you would need to model a tree structure and this makes the editor for it more of a tree style editor.

The display of the field I think has a few options like pick lists do. A tree style interface would be cool and if done with checkboxes could allow multiselect (question there: can you select a branch or does it have to be a leaf?). I’d expect a single select option to be pick lists either laid out one per line vertically or potentially horizontally flowing across (though that could get confusing with a bunch of options).

If you select down three levels and reset a selection from an earlier tier, your other levels get reset. This should be guarded with a warning and “don’t me warn again” option. That’s really only problematic in a pick list only world, the tree obviously makes selecting a different leaf more explicit.

iOS doesn’t have a tree control but instead you’d have to do layers of selections which I don’t think would be too bad, may even be relatively fast once you memorise the locations of the elements you want to enter. If you did layers of pick lists on iOS, then you could have them as a row per layer with a button to select from the pick list as well. Editing becomes a not dissimilar tree navigation and “add child” sort of interface.

Displaying multiselected items on either platform concisely could be done with a path style layout with configurable separators (defaulting to slashes like file paths or websites). Long names would have to be wrapped, more a concern on the phones than iPad or the Mac.

As an aside, I wanted a way to quickly edit a pick list on iOS whilst in it’s selection dialog the other day without having to navigate around to get to it. It’d be nice if there were an easy way to go from record input with a pick list to editing said pick list (long tap on the plus sign perhaps?).

Lot of work to build all of that though but a taxonomy/tree field type could be useful for a number of use cases that the prompter is being leveraged to solve.

[Michael Robertson]

Does “database engine conversion” mean I should start thinking about replacing the Docker Couch container on my Synology with something like, say, Mongo? :)

[Brendan]

Hi Michael,

I’m doing a conversion of the database to Core Data. But I’m still a ways off from releasing anything, even a beta. I’ve only just begun the conversion of the iOS version.

Thanks,

Brendan

[tonyt]

Hi Brendan
Without revealing secrets, can I ask why the change?
Cheers…

[Author]

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