►Q◄ How do you create cascading search form?

BenHayat

Let's say I have a Customer object that has Order Object as it's child and each Order has Line as it's child. A 3 tier relationship.

Now I want to offer user a form that will show a list of items (the last object in relationship), but I need to offer user 2 cascading drop downs to first select Which Customer and upon selecting a customer then the second drop down would get populated with orders of that customer. Then user would select an order and upon selecting the order, then I can show list of items in a grid.

I tried using Query on Items using form, but I can only get to show a dropdown on it's father which is the order, which shows all orders but not the customers first.

This is a basic search form that most apps use cascading search. Could someone shed some light on this please? or any of Aware samples do something like this?
Thanks!

BenHayat

The problem that I see, is that, I don't have a reference to Customer Object in my Item Object, because I've tried to avoid creating grand parents reference in grand children. Therefore, I have no Customer to do a dropdown on when I create a Search form for the lines.

Before adding a Customer reference into item, anyone has run into this case and had a clean solution for cascading search?

Thanks!

customaware

Ben,

I assume you have an Order reference attribute in the Customer and the corresponding Customer reference in the Order.

I use the convention o_RefAttribute to signify Owns and ob_RefAttribute to signify Owned By

So in Customer

CustomerName
....
o_Orders

and in Order...

OrderNumber
....
ob_Customer

Then similarly in the Order to Order Lines

OrderLineItem
OrderLineQuantity
OrderLineRate
ob_Order

and Hence Orders becomes....

OrderNumber
....
ob_Customer
o_OrderLines

Therefore you should be able to reference a Customers Order Lines by

FIND OrderLine WHERE OrderLine.ob_Order.ob_Customer = "The Drop Down Combo Box Selected Customer"

This bypasses any direct reference, so to speak, to the Order.

However, though I haven't tried it, I would have thought you could have a combo to select the Customer and then filter to next Combo for Orders to only those WHERE Order.ob_Customer = Customer (Combo selected Customer)

And then the Query for Order Lines becomes

FIND OrderLines WHERE OrderLines.ob_Order = Order (the second select Combo of Order)

I may have missed your point .....?

BenHayat

eagles9999 wrote
Ben,

I may have missed your point .....?

Firstly, allow me to thank you for responding to my post after your long day at the conference. Just shows your passion in Aware... Thank you.

See, I'm in the line item search form (all the way down) trying to have a dropdown for a customer that is two level above to get the cascading stared. I'm not going from Customer to order to lines. I'm in line form trying to do a dropdown on Customer when I don't have the Customer directly in lines Object.
Try it and you see what I mean.
In the past I'd carry the customer also inside of the lines as well, for this purpose. In this project I'm trying not to break OOP rule but I can't do the jump.

ACDC

For this kind of presentation I use "Display Layout" - and in the layout set up the panels so when a user clicks on one item in the grid, the result is presented in 2 or 3 other panels simultaneously,

Or alternatively set up a dedicated perspective for the view, in the LH frame have the Items listed and use the MaIn frame for the cascading items. I have something similar to this where the results are shown simultaneously in 13 different panels referencing 13 different objects