Feature request: More options for the Pages database relationship field

[opentype]

The Pages database relationship field is great for collecting more complex data that doesn’t fit in simple lists. But the field is not very user-friendly. 

First of all, it would be great to bring back more input options as in 3.4. At the moment, we only have the “type-ahead” input. But that means users need to know what record they want to link to upfront and they need to learn that they have to start typing to find it. For the majority of databases (which don’t have thousands of entries) a drop-down menu would be a better choice. It would clearly tell the users their choices without any guesswork about the entries or how to get to them. 

But my main problem is the fact that the field has no option to deal with missing entries. As admin I understand it and can deal with it, but for the users, it’s way too confusing. The field should show an option to create a missing entry, preferably inline without having to leave the page. Real-world example: A user creates an entry in a book database with links to an author and a publisher database. If an author is not yet available in the author database, it should be possible to create the external author entry instantly and preselect it right from the form creating the book entry. That’s what users would expect. I can’t tell them: first go to database B, C, D, and E and check if your related entries already exist and manually create them if necessary. Only then go to the main database to create your record A which links to B, C, D, and E. 

Edited March 25, 2022 by opentype

[Phillyman]

I feel like I suggested something similar, with nested databases.

Where you may have a music database, with an artist like The Foo Fighters, and then a subnested database of their albums, and then within the albums is the nested database of the songs for each album.

All for anything that makes the already powerful IPB Pages DBs more powerful

[Sonya*]

It would be nice to have the same functionality we already have for venues.

1. Select from an existing list
2. If not listed, display required fields for the record
3. Upon saving both records are saved.