Multiple Search/Browse Screens to Same Form

[BenFranske]

Hi, I'm fairly new to nuBuilder and it seems like there should be better ways to do some of what I want to do so I'm hopeful people here might have some ideas for me.

To start with I'd like to be able to have multiple different browse screens link back to the same edit form. To clarify, my users would like to be able to search based on just one field at a time but no matter what field they are searching the form to modify the record should look the same.

Right now I'm creating separate forms for searching based on each different field which is not especially onerous in and of itself but then I also need to duplicate all of the objects for every field on each of those new forms. Being able to clone all of the objects on a form at the same time as the form is cloned would be a big help but it's still messier than it should be. I was reading this thread and it appears that's not possible anyway though (unless I break down and write some PHP to do it). Down the road when I change/add some fields I will also have to go through each of these forms individually and update them, a considerably time consuming task.

There are two nice solutions I'm wondering if either (or something else) is possible:
1. Link objects to more than one form, then I could just add/modify a single object and it would do so across all the forms I have tied to that object.

2. Come up with a more powerful browse/search screen so that users can change which fields are searched on the fly (and potentially also create compound searches e.g. A in field Z AND B in field X)

I have some other things I'm trying to figure out as well but right now this is the most pressing one.

Ideas?

Thanks!

[massiws]

... my users would like to be able to search based on just one field at a time but no matter what field they are searching the form to modify the record should look the same.

Do you know that in Form > Browse tab you can specify a Form to Edit? So the same Edit Screen can be called from different Browse Screens and objects are created only for one Edit form.

1. Link objects to more than one form, then I could just add/modify a single object and it would do so across all the forms I have tied to that object.

This is not possible: each object is linked to a single form.

2. Come up with a more powerful browse/search screen so that users can change which fields are searched on the fly (and potentially also create compound searches e.g. A in field Z AND B in field X)

Not in nuBuilder 2, but in nuBuilderPro there is a new feature: tick box for including/excluding columns in search (see here). May this be helpful?

Hope this helps,
Max

[BenFranske]

Do you know that in Form > Browse tab you can specify a Form to Edit? So the same Edit Screen can be called from different Browse Screens and objects are created only for one Edit form.

I did not know that. I had seen that Form to Edit setting but I misunderstood the functionality of that. It seems like that is exactly what I'm looking for, I'll give it a try.

2. Come up with a more powerful browse/search screen so that users can change which fields are searched on the fly (and potentially also create compound searches e.g. A in field Z AND B in field X)

Not in nuBuilder 2, but in nuBuilderPro there is a new feature: tick box for including/excluding columns in search (see here). May this be helpful?

I think it's a step in the right direction. Right now I'm just mocking this up for the organization I'm helping out but would like to build this in the next month or so, hopefully version 3 will be out soon (or there will be a nice upgrade path so I don't have to rebuild all my forms/objects). I think it would be nice to have a more powerful search tool where people can select from drop down lists of fields and then choose operators like AND OR NOT for each field with a different text box for each field.

The particular database I'm working with is for a historical transportation museum of all the historic photos they have and the archivist would ideally like to be able to searches like all photos that contain streetcar_number X AND city Y OR city Z NOT already_published and then be able to browse through the results (ideally with record forward and back buttons, but I already know that's not currently possible in nuBuilder).

Thanks for putting me on the right track about the Form to Edit bit!

[massiws]

BenFranske,
pay attention that nuBuilder v2 projects are not compatible with nuBuilderPro (see here).

About your problem, have a look also at these features, already in nuBuilder v2/Pro:

• you can use these search box options;
• have a look how Form-Wizard works;
• you can build a custom form (also with some code in Custom Code > Before Browse to create a temporary table), with all objects you want to use as filters and a button to call openBrowse() function;

Max