Enable Adding Linked Records via Forms

Feature Ideas
1

At present, Baserow enables you to add a link field to your forms wherein you can then identify it as a “single” link or a “multiple” link. While this is good for records where the options are already available in the system, it’s not good for people who want to use forms that enable people to submit reports or information while keeping data normalized and linked.

It should also be noted that other similar solutions like NocoDB have some availability for this. In order to achieve this a few modifications would be necessary. To demonstrate, we can imagine a simple structure:

Table: Reports
Fields: Name, Submitter, Report Data (link)

Table: Report Data
Field: Type, Value, Report (link)

We want to create a Form view for reports, that allows a user to submit a report with multiple linked Report Data.

  • When adding the “Report Data” field we should have a radio option for:
    • No New Entries
    • Allow New Entries
    • Require New Entries
  • When selecting either of the latter two we subsequently need to select a Form view on the linked record type (“Report Data”) to use for new entries.

When a user then goes to view the “parent” form (to submit a new Report), they are presented with the traditional linked record UI, however, if the “Allow New Entries” option is selected, there is an additional “+ Add ”, e.g. “+ Add Report Data” which, when clicked opens the selected related form in a modal enabling them to create the new entry. Upon submission, the child “Report Data” entry is submitted, and the id is returned and linked.

If the “Require New Entries” was selected, the user will only have the option to “+ Add Report Data” and will not be able to link to existing entries in the linked table.

If a linked record created from the parent Form is deleted from the parent form, it should remove that entry in the child table (as to enable mistakes and limited garbage data not ultimately linked to the parent).

Linked records added in this way could also have an “edit” icon which allows the data to be edited.

By leveraging linked record forms, users can create custom modal forms for dependent records. In principle this could be recursive if the modal UI was done right.

2

Hi @msahagian, thank you for sharing your idea. To better understand it, could you share examples of how similar tools handle this use case?

3

Sure, here is an example from NocoDB. When hovering over the field that links to another table, it adds a (+) on the right of the input:

{2FE28DE7-4E30-4284-95D0-901C1A5C0C84}
{2FE28DE7-4E30-4284-95D0-901C1A5C0C84}995×359 14.3 KB

Clicking the + gives you a list of all records you could link, and in the bottom left there is a “+ New Record”

{4FFA75C4-B040-439E-ABE5-42B633C12268}
{4FFA75C4-B040-439E-ABE5-42B633C12268}1109×824 44.9 KB

Clicking that brings up a modal form to add the new linked record. You can enter in the info and the “Create and Link” button on the top right will be available to save and link it:

{6BA9696A-8F7B-42D1-B2C5-C47CF319D078}
{6BA9696A-8F7B-42D1-B2C5-C47CF319D078}1472×1118 36.4 KB

So, the form provides both the ability to create the parent record and the child records as opposed to only linking to what already exists in the child records.

It’s worth noting that NocoDB does not have all the features I suggested which would be improvements over NocoDB (in my opinion) if Baserow could do them:

  • NocoDB does not not allow you to select the Form view for the modal form when creating the child record. It appears to only use default form which necessarily shows all fields.
  • NocoDB does not allow you to require only new records, so it will always show you other record you can link to as opposed to being able to make those child records unique to their parent.
  • In NocoDB, if I create a record via this form and then unlink it before submitting the form, it does not remove the record I created, it will just sit in the linked child table with no parent record.

Does this help?