Method Community

We talked to support and they said to post here with the relevant bits, so here goes: 

I'm testing calls to the API to update a record using MethodAPIUpdate V2. This is the request (anonymized):

     account  login  password    NovaEventsVendors    Vendor Vendor_RecordID     Unassigned 5501   1042   

This is what comes back:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252" ?><MethodAPI response = "The field Vendor_RecordID does not support edit." ></MethodAPI>   

There's nothing I can see to adjust whether or not a field is editable, so why are we getting this error?

Also:

 - How do I paste code into this forum? I used the pre tags on that bit above, but it looks like it's just rendering them. 

 - Where did the API documentation go? I can no longer find the links in the new site setup.

Thanks!

Hey guys, any word on this? Phone support said to post here, but I'm not getting any feedback. 

ImTheirWebGuy - my apologies for the delay in getting an answer for you. We've shuffled teams around a little bit, and the API forum has been poorly managed by us. This will be rectified very soon - I promise.

In the meantime, the Vendor_RecordID field is a read-only field.  Every dropdown field has a display and a value (RecordID).  Showing the Vendor_RecordID is just for informational purposes to avoid an extra look up when reading.

I can see the value, however, in allowing you to specify the _RecordID when inserting or updating. It saves unnecessary lookups for you and for the API.....however this isn't a feature today. I'll add it to the API wish list.  In the meantime, you'll need to do a look up to the Vendor table to get the FulllName based on the RecordID, if that's what you know.

In terms of the API, the docs are here:

http://method.me/api/

Paul

Hi Paul!

Thanks for the response. Maybe we're going about this the wrong way; if so, perhaps you could provide some guidance:

I have a table which stores event roles, and we need to be able to add or delete vendors to rows in that table via the API. They're currently connected as linked fields: 

They start off null, but we assign them via a dropdown in the method interface. We are capable of adding and clearing them there. I need to be able to do the same via the API. Can you advise how we would do that?

Not sure I can tell what your table structure is from the post. So I'll guess that you have many vendors, and many different event types, and you want to join them together so you have a many:many.

So, iIf you have a setup like this:

TableName: Vendor

Fields: 

RecordID

FullName

TableName: VendorEvents

Fields:

RecordID

EventName

TableName: VendorEventsLink

Fields:

RecordID

Vendor

Event

If you know the Vendor, say "Bob Crenshaw Ltd.", and you have an event, say "Year End Party", then you should be able to link the two: by inserting a record into VendorEventsLink:

Vendor='Bob Crenshaw Ltd.'
Event= 'Year End Party'

This might give you back RecordID 55 in the VendorEventsLink table. If you want to delete the association, delete from the VendorEventsLink table where the RecordID=55.

If this is not resembling your table structure, please let me know the exact table names and fields name and how they relate. 

Paul

Here is the structure:

This isn't adding up for me.

A "Linked" field is one that travels up through a dropdown relationship and grabs a field in the parent table.

For example, I could make a table "Widget", where widgets are assigned to customers.

WidgetName (Text)
Customer (Dropdown)

If I wanted the CompanyName of the customer to show up in my Widget table, I would add a Linked field, via the Customer dropdown, that would grab it. So I would get:

WidgetName (Text)
Customer (Dropdown)
CompanyName (Linked - Via Customer).

So, in your example, you have RoleName and Vendor as Linked fields. But what are they linking via?

Or is this just terminology, where by "Link" you mean Dropdown? If so, setting the Vendor in the AssignmentTable by the Vendor's FullName will work.

Paul

OK, so with your explanation and some testing, I see that we can post the name without the ID, and have the ID autocorrect to the matched name. Awesome! That resolves the issue for us.