References

A reference is a field that points at a row in another table. Adminium builds one from a foreign key without being asked.

Picking one record

A foreign key becomes a search over the table it points at. Type, and the menu narrows; each row shows the other table’s own display column, with a second line of detail where the table has one. Choosing a row stores its key.

Two smaller variants exist for short tables:

• Choice cards — every candidate as a card, for the handful of rows nobody needs to search.
• Select — a plain menu.

Both read the whole table, so Adminium offers them only where that is reasonable.

Linking several records

Some relationships are not a column. A product is in many categories; an order is served by several people. Adminium calls these links, and a form can carry a field of them: a box of chips with a search underneath.

Add a relation field in the form designer — Add field lists the table’s relations under its columns.

What a link field writes is rows in the joining table, not a value in yours:

• Creating a record writes the record and its links together. If the links cannot be written, the record is not created either.
• Editing changes only what you changed — the links you added are added, the ones you removed are removed, and the ones you left alone are not rewritten.
• Undo puts the links back as they were, not just the record.

When somebody cannot read the other table

A reference over a table the reader has no grant on is shown disabled, saying so. It is not hidden and it is not a search that returns nothing: a field that silently finds no rows looks like an empty table, and somebody will spend an afternoon on it.

An existing value stays visible as the key it holds. Adminium will not resolve it through a permission the reader does not have.

Before the record exists

In the New dialog there is no record yet, so links are collected and written with it in one step. Anything that cannot work that way — file attachments on a source Adminium cannot alter, for instance — appears on the record’s page after it exists, and says so.