Auto-fill parent ref in child from inline table?

[Steve]

Has anyone figured out the conditions that prompt the app to auto-fill the parent link when adding a row from an inline table?

[LeventK]

What you mean with …prompt the app… @Steve? Like a bubble for example or you mean some kinda auto-focus?

[Steve]

When I click the Add link/button in an inline table:

In some cases, the form that opens will have an appropriate column pre-filled with a Ref back to the row I hit Add from; in other cases, no column is pre-filled. I can’t figure out why some auto-fill and some don’t.

[LeventK]

As per my experience; it directly fills the Ref value if there’s a reverse-reference (isPartOf) but it does not if there’s a direct reference. When there’s a direct reference, I generally use a de-ref in the initial value of the ref column of the child table to recall the key column value of the parent.

[Steve · Accepted solution]

After some experimentation, I’ve found that if REF_ROWS() is the entirety of the column’s App formula expression, the Add button in the related inline view will auto-fill the column referenced in the REF_ROWS() expression in the new row. To retain this magic, the REF_ROWS() results cannot be modified in any way, such as by list addition or subtraction, or with SORT() or ORDERBY().

Magic:

• REF_ROWS(...)
• (REF_ROWS(...))

Not magic:

• REF_ROWS(...) + LIST(...)
• REF_ROWS(...) - LIST(...)
• SORT(REF_ROWS(...))
• ORDERBY(REF_ROWS(...), ...)
• FILTER(...)
• SELECT(...)

IsPartOf, ON or OFF, appears to have no impact.

If you imagine an add-row operation is equivalent to an action of type App: link to another view within this app with a Target expression of LINKTOVIEW("form-view"), the magic REF_ROWS() expression appears to change the Target expression to LINKTOFORM("form-view", "parent-ref-column", [_THISROW]) (where parent-ref-column is the column named in the REF_ROWS() expression).

[LeventK]

Sweet…
Sorry for being so dumb, but I couldn’t quite get why the ref column value is not auto-filled in the case of a direct reference but auto-filled in case of a reverse-reference on the contrary. Appreciate provided you can clarify the solution a bit more @Steve. Thnx.

[Steve]

LeventK:

I couldn’t quite get why the ref column value is not auto-filled in the case of a direct reference but auto-filled in case of a reverse-reference

I don’t know why, unfortunately. It’s just my observation. I think AppSheet recognizes a REF_ROWS() expression and treats in in a special way.

[GreenFlux]

This is great info, @Steve! Thanks for testing and providing your results.

Could we get this added to the REF_ROWS() doc?

[Steve]

Done!

[Bahbus]

@Steve I’m not 100% sure, but I think I have found the other work around to keeping the magical effect. I have an EnumList of base Ref (mostly for back-end editing), and then a a VC of List base Ref with an AppFormula pointing to the EnumList (for front end inline display). Unless I’m forgetting about something else I did, I believe it keeps the automatic population.

[MultiTech]

Steve:

Done!

This was working, despite the presence of Orderby(), for months in an app I have. It stopped working today and reverted back to this (I guess intended) behavior.

[Steve]

I have no explanation for any such change in behavior.

[MultiTech]

Very likely it was a bug… and it’s been squeaking by because no one would think that behavior is a bug.

But if the intended behavior is for the “Magic” to only work when you’ve got the system-standard Ref_Rows() - this is very limiting for data-schema design capabilities.

I’ll have to manage the standard-system inline view (so I can keep the magic), but I’ll have to create copies I may need (with OrderBy() and such) for calculation purposes - duplicating data.

[Mjbonnell]

Hi Steve,

I stumbled across this post after days of searching as I could not figure out why the auto fill on 2 of my inlines were working on, but the other one not. 2 have the refRow and work but the other one sadly has to reference an enum List so I had to use a filter instead. 

Is there anyway you now know of that supports the prefill in this circumstance? So far I’ve tried to tag the user with “currently editing entry xx” but could not find a trigger to change this value. 

any advice would be great

kind regards

matthew