How do I create a subform like the Northwind sample Orders form in ACCESS? I have an Orders table thats linked to an Orders_Details table. I want to create a form in where a user can insert multiple records (Order datails) for the order.

Hi

Do you need to do this with a data access page, an access form or an ASP form you created?

Regards
Marnus

Such is Life!

Oh, sorry how dumb of me not to specify. I want to create this in ASP. You know like sub forms. i heard there not a good idea in ASP, but I need to create something similiar. thanks

I wouldn't say they aren't a good idea, it's just complicated.

I looked at the orders form you are talking about. Something like this could most certainly be built. What is your ASP knowledge at this point?

Peter
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Work smarter, not harder.

I'm pretty much just getting the hang of it. For intance if you give me the right ideas I can follow through witha solution. For instance lets say we have a page that you want to create an order, the user will insert all fields pertaining to the order dates customer name etc. now one order can have many details here is where i was thinking sub form. Im sure what ever advice you give me I'll understand completely.

From what I under stand I have to pass these values as an Array.
I have a simple SP that inserts a record into a table the Details table. To have these SP work multiple times I would have to pass it as an array correct? I think thats were im stuck.

Well, you are asking a pretty big question. The answer needs to cover a whole lot of things: relationship of order to the order details, getting the details from the database, rendering the details onto the page, processing the updates, providing capability to add details, and putting those added details into the database.

From a broad perspective, here's what I would do...

Your page is dealing with the details of one order. So you select the current details from the database, and draw those details out to an HTML table. If you want to be able to edit all the details, then you'll need to render the table with the appropriate input mechanisms for each column of the details (text box, select, radio buttons). For adding capability, you would render an additional row that matches all the others, but there's just no data pre-filled into the inputs. When the page is processed, you'll need to handle all the input fields appropriately. The hardest part of this is knowing how to handle a variable number of "rows". If you create each input control with the same name, the posted values will come in as a comma separated list so you can create arrays of the values. Then you can iterate thru each value for each control. So you could go thru the whole set and call your update query to save any changes made. The "add" functionality which added a blank row will have to work a little different. Usually with something like this, I save a hidden input that contains some ID value for each row. When I add the blank input row, that ID value is blank. That way when I'm iterating thru all my values, I can see that the ID is blank and call the insert query instead of the update query.

Unlike getting data, when you are dealing with inserting/updating multiple rows of data you have to deal with each row independently. You can't pass an array (from your ASP scripting language) into a SQL command. You are best to just make multiple calls. You can optimize the code by making multiple commands in one call to the database, but in the end it still comes down to "multiple" SQL commands.

Peter
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Work smarter, not harder.

Thanks!