Feb

27

Related Records List Update – Part One

Filed Under Tutorials 

I’m starting another weekly series. The premise: almost a year ago, Simon wrote a great tutorial about an advanced feature of Bento: the Related Records List Fields.
If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend you do. I would like to summarize and clarify some things and also update the usage of the fields with the added features in Bento 2.

First let’s review the basics: if you simply create a one-way link between two Libraries, you HAVE to add any related records to the list by hand. Nothing will be filled in automatically through any other action you take. Bento 2 did not change that functionality.
In addition, another question just came up: what if I create a self-referencing relationship (e.g. dragging Address Book onto itself)? Technically, we’re dealing with only a single library, so you still have to add records manually to the Related Records List Field.

You can create Related Records List Fields in Libraries AND Collections. Be careful about using Smart Collections as related records source, they can trick you. Besides limited functionality (you can’t add new records manually to the source), records can also disappear if you change the criteria. We’ll talk more about Smart Collections when we’ll discuss relational loops.

Update: Simon reminded me that Bento 1 did not even allow Smart Collections as sources for a Reletated Records List Field. So that is another Bento 2 enhancement.

Comments

2 Responses to “Related Records List Update – Part One”

  1. bob on March 2nd, 2009 12:45 pm

    Where is the “Related Records List Fields” article by Simon?

  2. Florian on March 2nd, 2009 12:53 pm

    Hi Bob,
    it’s a whole tutorial, in PDF form for downloading. Just click “Tutorials” in the sidebar under “Categories,” and then srcoll down a bit.

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