The use of a Show if expression on the form view will have no effect in what you’re trying to accomplish. That expression affects the display of the view in the main menu or along the bottom navigation bar only if the view’s position is one of those. Show if in views has no effect at all if the view is in the ref position.
Denis:
I have created form view for each reading table and set them as inline so if you click on a site it takes you to the inline views for electricity and for gas.
What does this mean? An “inline view” I would take to mean the view with the “_Inline” suffix. What do you mean by “set [the form view] as inline”?
In order to accomplish what you’ve described, you need an action (Behavior > Actions) of type App: go to another view within this app and a Target expression that uses LINKTOROW() and IF() to generate the deep link for the appropriate form.
Many thanks,
So how fo I restrict/constrain vews
Denis
Let me try it (but tomorrow). Many thaks
Denis
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I’ll try this tomorrow but this highlights major issue with Appsheet documentation. How is a newcomer supposed to work this out??
Denis
As I indicated above, I wound up getting in over my head on this one. So, I really appreciate @Steve coming to the rescue. I tried to engage, not because I thought I was qualified to do so but because it seemed that @Denis’s inquiry had gone unanswered. I’l bow out here but I’d like to also thank @Lynn for pitching in! Good luck @Denis!
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In regard to AppSheet documentation (@Denis’s last comment), I agree. This forum has been invaluable to me and is what has made it possible to build an app that I am now quite happy with but I’ve been rather underwhelmed by the documentation. There are quite a few documentation pages but, in my experience, they are difficult to decipher. I would like to see more example expressions with more detailed explanations for people like me who have trouble absorbing the lessons.
Speaking of lessons, I once proposed that AppSheet create a course of simple lessons that a novice could work through to become familiar with the app. That proposal didn’t get a big response but I still think it’s a good idea. The explanations could be text, but occasional video illustrations might be helpful. The lessons would be like simple recipes (i.e. “We’re going to start with these ingredients and make such-and-such.”). Ideally, they would have a cumulative effect so that a person who took the time to work through the whole series would have a good understanding of the platform. The lessons would take some time to create but save a lot of time on this forum.
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Kirk_Masden:
I would like to see more example expressions with more detailed explanations
Suggestions welcome!
Sorry to join this conversation little late… but it sounds you want to hide one of your inline views from the form view depending on the [Utility] value. When you want to do that, you need to show or hide the virtual list column from your “Sites” table.
Use something like [Utility]=“Gas” for the gas readings and [Utility]=“Electricity” for electricity readings.
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Thanks @Steve! One example of a situation in which it would be nice to see an example with more detailed explanation is
contains([profile],“04”)
that @Denis asked about. The “contains” expression can be found here:
. . . but what follows is the entirety of the explanation that is available there:
CONTAINS(text, keyword) returns TRUE if keyword is found in text.
Notice that there isn’t even an example of how the “text” is to be indicated (e.g. “sites[profile]” or “[profile]” depending on where we are in the app).
Also notice that there is no link to a more detailed explanation.
In addition to tutorials, I’d like to see a link on every one of these expressions to a separate page with examples of how the expression can be used. Obviously, creating such pages will take many hours. In the long run, however, I think such reference pages will greatly enhance the value of the AppSheet platform.
Google sheets has a huge number of users so, just as a matter of scale, it may not be practical in the short term for AppSheet to try to replicate the quality and quantity of documentation that’s available for Google sheets. Still, it would be nice to see pages like the following for AppSheet:
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Thanks @Aleksi. must admit i got confused what @Denis was trying to accomplish and I also though he was simply trying to hide or show the two virtual column lists based on type values. So I am still wondering why ShowIf in the two virtual columns cannot accomplish this - showing only the appropriate lists based on the value of the [utility] column.
I am not the best with the formulas yet, but should he be able to test the column value as he is trying? How to not show the list column if none of the list items equal the utility type?
@Mike, @Denis is trying to show/hide the virtual list depending on the value in a parent record, not in the child record… If I have understood this request correctly.
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Thanks to everyone. OK, so the parent table is SItes and the Child (reference) tables are electricity Meter Readings and Gas Meter Readings. Sites has a column “utility” that contains one of two values "electricity"or “gas”. Some rows have no gas,some have no electricity and some have both. Where only one value exists I don’t want to sow the two forms “electricity meter reads” and “gas meter reads” but only one dependent upon the value in the utility column. Aleksi’s suggestion solves the problem. So, many thanks!
There is a second element to my “show-if” problem. Sites contains a column [Profile] which (a) only applies to electricity and (b) contains either “03” or “04”. My "electricity meters readings table contains two columns (1) Day Read and (2) Night Read. I only want to ask or data entry for Night Read where (sites[profile] = “04”.
Earlier in this thread Steve Coils suggested I needed to use Actions and a linktorow target expression but I wasn’t sure if this referred to this last problem or the former.
Many thanks for any further assistance and for all y our help so far.
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You can read it with the Deref expression for the Show? like… [Site].[Profile]=“04” (if the Ref column’s name is “Site”).
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Many thanks, Aleksis -this works.
You’re welcome
Last question – can I enforce leading zeroes in a number field (or it could be a text field)– the actual meter reading?
Denis
If it’s a number field, you can choose digits from column’s definition.