SOLVED: Search Bar - Show Unique Values

Need help Database
1

Hi Guys

Any ideas of how to use the Search Bar to return only unique values? I’ve seen a few posts on this in the forum, but no real solution. I don’t want to use a Dropdown List.

So if I look for an items e.g. Burger. It comes back with the 3 entries in my DB that has Burger allocated to it:

But how do I get the dropdown to show only 1 entry for Burger?

Thanks in advance!

@romanmg @NigelG @emmanuel - Sorry for tagging you into this, but based on the forum searches I’ve done - It looks like you’re the pro’s that may just be able to help as you answered all my other queries on existing forum posts.

2

Perhaps create a new thing with a column called unique_item and it only haa unique values. Search on that new thing’s column

3

Hi @davidyjackson

Thanks for the suggestion. Let me maybe explain a bit more detailed of what I want to accomplish and be less cryptic about it :wink: And hopefully there’s an outside the box suggestion that could work!

So I upload an image to my DB. but with that image upload I have an input where up to 4 different Descriptions can be created and associated with the photo.

So let’s say the photo uploaded is:

image.jpg581×600 97.8 KB

From here the user creates 4 descriptors in the DB. Let’s say

  1. Boy
  2. Tree
  3. Book
  4. Cap

The 2nd image that gets uploaded is:

image.jpg1300×1390 176 KB

an here the categories are:

  1. Girl
  2. Tree
  3. Flower

The Database now contains an Images as well as the 7 Descriptions. But the description TREE is duplicated with both images.
Something along the lines of:
Boy *img>
Tree *img>
Book *img>
Cap *img>
Girl *img>
Tree *img>
Flower *img>

(I’ve created my Workflow to create a line entry in the DB to assign a new row for each pic and description)

What I want my app to do now is to use a Search Bar to select one of the “Descriptions” and then in a repeating group show all the images that match the descriptor.

So if I select boy, then only 1 image will show in my repeating group. But if I select Tree, 2 images will show.
Because tree is now shown as TREE and TREE(1), I can only show 1 picture at a time. If I could somehow combine the search bar to only show the unique value once “TREE” then it will return all my images in the repeating group.

Any suggestions?

PS: Sorry for the lengthy post

davidyjackson 4

3 Likes
5

A-ha… I see what you mean. Let me give it a try and I’ll let you know.

Thanks so much for helping out!

6

Thanks for all the help @davidyjackson

Your suggestion worked perfectly. So I had a 2nd Thing created (Tag_Table) to store the unique values and as each category got added it was saved in a new TAG as per your example (Image_Table TAGS) [Saved as text as a list].

The issue was then to use the Unique_tag “Thing” (My SearchBar) to do a search value for a Tag in another “Thing” and only return the images related to Tags that meet the criteria, It took some playing around but eventually I figured it out.

(In case someone ever stumbles upon this Thread and have the same problem)…
In my repeating group I did a search for the Image_Tables’s Images. But on the “Search For” I added 1 Constraint:

  1. Tag contains Tag_Tables’ Unique Tag Value

And that seems to have resolved the matter. Thanks @davidyjackson.

Now onto my next issue… trying to figure out why my Repeating Group only displays Images IF they are set to “:Random Item, :First Item or :Last Item”. URGH!

7

You are welcome. Best wishes on your app.

8

Pulling back unique values into a search box can get very slow at scale.

If this gets to be a problem, then you can “Unique Tags” table have a list of Images. The workflow gets a little complicated, but essentially …

If the Tag already exists then add the image to the tag’s list of images.

If the Tag doesn’t exist then create the tag with the image.

9

Makes sense… I’ll definitely keep an eye on that as it gets bigger.

Thank you Nigel.