Dependent fields

Dependent fields are attributes whose values are constrained by another field. For example, if you want to have a field that displays all the cities for a selected state, you could make the city field dependent upon the state field. In this section, we walk through this city/state example.

You can only make attributes dependent in the Form Editor. If you create a shared attribute, you cannot make it a dependent field when you create it. (Once you import it into a form, you can edit it and make it a dependent field.)

First, you need to create the lookup tables for cities and states. Here are the first few rows of these two tables.

The lkup_state table:.

state_id (primary key)	state_name
1	Massachusetts
2	New York

The lkup_city table:

city_id (primary key)	city_name	state_id (foreign key pointing to primary key for lkup_state)
1	Boston	1
2	Cambridge	1
3	New York	2
4	Albany	2

Once you have these tables, you create the parent (state) and child (city) attributes.

For the state attribute, use the following values:

Field	Value
Database Column	state_id
Use values from this database table	lkup_state
Key Column	state_id
This field is dependent on the following column	Leave this box clear.

For the city attribute, use the following values:

Field	Value
Database Column	city_id
Use values from this database table	lkup_city
Key Column	city_id
This field is dependent on the following column	Check this box and select state (the Internal Name you defined for the state attribute).

Note the following:

You can have a multi-select attribute DB be dependent upon a single-select DB attribute, but not the other way around. In the example above, the city field could be a multi-select DB attribute, but not the state field.

You can sort lookup values based on either the text description or the ID for the lookup value.