Generate Structure ID for Record

Hi all

I have a form that creates an issue record for one of a number of locations ; the location is recorded when the form is initially completed. The issue record requires an ID in the form XXXX-YYY where XXXX is a location identifier and YYY is a sequence number.

At the moment I manually type in the issue ID but I have to remember what the location identifier is (XXX) and what was the last sequence number for this location.

Ideally I would like to generate the issue ID automatically. How can I approach this please?

In pseudocode I need to:-

  • allow the user to select the location in the form (this bit is already there and looks up from an option set).
  • look up an identifier associated with a location (the dentifier is already there as attribute of each option in the option set
  • find the highest sequence number for this location (this is not stored separately it is just part of the issue ID which is currently just text
  • increment the highest sequence number by 1
  • concatenate this number onto the end of the location identifier with a hyphen
  • write this identifier to the database

Can someoone please set me off in the right direction?

Thanks