Single Portal Drill Down

We’ve all been inspired by the creativity and wide array of UI widgets which have come from the mobile side of computing. In fact, what you present and when/how you present it always offers the opportunity to find new ways if doing so. The whole swipe down to “rubber band” a refresh was a breath of fresh UI air.

When presenting users with options, one of the more common methods for presenting these is using a Pop-up menu. After making a selection in an initial menu a second menu presents options specific to the selection made in the first and so on down the tree. It’s a very common UI pattern.

Sometimes, however, this doesn’t quite work from a UI standpoint. It’s at this point in time when another option may be desired. If you’re comfortable with learning and using ExecuteSQL and how Virtual List works, then you’ll find that presenting a hierarchical tree of options can easily be managed within a single portal. Drilling down through the options and having a way to traverse back up the tree is everything you’ll find in this video. The sample file will have all the parts you need in order to copy into your own FileMaker solutions!

AttachmentSize
SinglePortalDrillDown.zip371.34 KB

Comments

Hi Matt,

This is a great demo. One question. In the script Virtual List Row Click (rowString ) the sql has:
SELECT ~name, ~children, ~id
FROM ~@Values v
WHERE ~level=?";

What is the purpose of the v in the FROM statement? Script works with out it and with it.
Thanks

@sculler Its a nod to 'proper' SQL queries where you give a table an alias
so FROM table is the same as FROM table v is the same as FROM table AS v
You can then use the table alias later, particularly where you might want fields form two different tables with the same field name
SELECT a.field, b.field FROM tableA AS a JOIN tableB AS b ON a.keyfield = b.keyfield .....