So @quietchat do you believe this form could be achieved with the Stack-Its form creator instead?
David -
Let me be as clear as possible, because I would not want you to spend money and then find you still can’t achieve what you need. These are the tables you would have to create in MYSQL
The relationship among the tables would look like this:
Using a CRUD system you could build the School and Instrument tables quite easily.
The Lessons table is the important relational bit. You could query that table asking questions like “which schools teach trombone?” or “which schools teach the most woodwind courses?”
However, to build that table, you have to do it an entry at a time as the School-Instrument pair is unique.
In truth there are some shortcuts to creating this database. You could create an empty instuments table for example and then import a CSV (comma separated variable list) of classes of instruments and instrument names. You could do that in any spreadsheet and then export as CSV. Likewise for schools.
The big deal about CRUD is the ability to take the database you’ve created and manipulate it.
So, to answer your question as directly and honestly as I can, unless you are familiar with PHPMyAdmin, MYSQL, and writing queries (aka views), you’re likely to be disappointed. I believe there is a free version of the software I mentioned that you can play with and see if it meets your needs. But you definitely have some work ahead. If you decide to pursue this project, I can promise you one thing. The journey will be worth it and you’ll come out the other side capable of adapting what you’ve learned to many other projects.
Best of luck to you.
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Thank you for your considered response. Just to clear up some things:
Firstly, the database is a FileMaker database and is most definitely configured to be relational with multiple tables – quite a few actually. The mySQL part is simply a “holding” table, where data from an online enrolment portal is stored prior to processing and importing into the main database. The online enrolment portal is built with RapidWeaver and FormLoom.
All I need FormLoom to do, is correctly populate this simple holding table with the data actually entered by the end user. And that means dealing with the visibility issue presented by conditional fields. The design limitation at the moment is that FormLoom only allows population of remote mySQL fields via hardwiring of its “Form Items”. I’ve demonstrated why this is a problem when working with conditional fields which rely on visibility switching.
So this actually isn’t about the how the database is built or deployed. The database is built correctly and functions to spec. The way I’ve deployed the conditional fields in FormLoom is standard practice. And in my view, those conditional fields should play nice with the “save to mySQL” implementation. Certainly a bit of a rethink to make it work though.
Now, putting aside mySQL implementation for a moment. It doesn’t play nice with email receipts either. It would appear the only way to make this work is to name the instrument lists “Instrument (School1)”, “Instrument (School2)”, “Instrument (School3)” etc etc and then populate the email receipt with all thirty of these regardless of which school is actually chosen. Furthermore, it makes for ugly labelling on the form itself, I would like it to say “Instrument”, not "Instrument (School#).
Andy - I was guessing about some elements of your application and therefore gave you an answer that only partially applied to your situation. One lingering issue remains, I can’t see how you can get where you want to go without writing some PHP.
I went back to look at the documentation for Formloom and there is a very nice example provided of PHP code which uses the switch function to modify the “to” address line based on conditional input. I just can’t think of a way this could be done otherwise.
Maybe I’m missing something. It just seems there has to be some kind of mediating code to do what you want. Should you find a way to get this done without code, I’m sure lots of us would be very interested in seeing it. Regardless, I wish you success in getting your application to work as you want however you do it.
Thanks and I understand you didn’t necessarily have the full picture. Appreciate your input. I’m sure if @yabdab had a solution, he’d provide it.
As it stands at the moment, only “skip-logic” type FormLoom conditional fields are going to play nice with email receipts and mySQL.
@yabdab is it possible you could create new, up-to-date video tutorials for your stacks, especially Formsnap3 and Formloom4?
It’s my understanding that Formloom4 and Formsnap3 are very similar so surely video tutorials for each could be beneficial to many.
There’s just a somewhat tedious series of 20 manuals for Formsnap3.
Similarly, there’s a 4800-word Formloom4 “Documentation” page.
I find video tutorials complete with sound to be very, very, very helpful, far more helpful than scrolling through text-only manuals on a web page. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
@yabdab RapidWeaver is a visual tool and visual tutorials will work better for most–because your customers are visual people.
Right now, there are no video tutorials for Formsnap3 or Formloom4, yet there’s a silent, no-sound “Intro” video for Formsnap 2, but there’s a group of 10 tutorial videos (with sound) for Formsnap1. I have watched these multiple times trying to figure out how to use Formsnap3, but the Formsnap2 video is silent so I have to watch carefully multiple times because it’s very difficult to follow, and I can’t tell how relevant the Formsnap1 videos to Formsnap3.
Let me explain how this becomes even more problematic for you.
I have decided to postpone upgrading to Paysnap3–your newest Yabdab upgrade–because I have never been able to get Paysnap2 to actually work.
It’s frustrating because the only Paysnap video tutorials on the Yabdab Vimeo channel are for Paysnap1, and then just a 2-minute “demo” video for Paysnap3.
My Paysnap2 support is a 2000-word manual.
Can you create newer, comprehensive tutorials for your titles? I’m sure they’d prove very helpful for many people. Thanks.
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I think you’d be better off making a new topic for this one. Looks like this particular thread is being ignored now 
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