Turn Table Id into a useable Table referance

I am attempting to do something some what wacky with making a canvas talk to its parent row. I can get the Table ID of the canvas to show up in the parent row. Is there a way to turn that ID into a useable table reference that could go into a formula? I would be happy to explore packs as well. Just don’t have a lot of experience coding.

Hi Jessica

Welcome to the community!!

If you’ve not done a lot of coding, you’re at EXACTLY the right place.

Like you can use thisRow to reference fields in the row you’re in, you can use parentRow to reference fields from the canvas to the row it belongs in.

R
P

Thanks for your reply. From my understanding parentRow only works for filtering. When I try to use it in formulas, Coda doesn’t recognize it.

I was wondering if there was a way to turn a table ID (grid-qEhz2m_AqY) into a table reference. Or while in the parent row, reference the canvas table in that is in said row.

@Piet_Strydom Can you explain what you mean a bit more? I haven’t been able to use parentRow in anything accept filtering and if you use thisRow to reference a canvas you get the URL link for the canvas not the table reference.

Hi Jessica,

Sorry for the slow response.

That’s my new learning for the day, was not aware that parentrow() can only be used in filters.

Why would you want to do that? You can use the table name as a reference in any formula.

Can you please provide some more detail about what you are trying to do, in user terminology? Maybe post an example doc, that is the most helpful.

Regards
Piet

Hi, I ended up doing something different. But I’ll type it out in case it helps someone. What I was trying to do was essentially make a column in a parent table reference a column in the canvas table.

Basically the idea was to have Projects in the parent column and Tasks in the canvas table. The reason it was set up this way is that the canvas could reference a set of “template” tasks which were duplicated for each one. (Each project has a nearly identical task list)

Then I wanted a way to look at all the tasks at once however, becasue each of the canvases are duplicates of the template they are considered separate tables meaning that they will not connect or talk to each other in any way shape or form. That seems pretty baked into how coda works.

What I was attempted to do is to have a weird view of the Projects table where a column was a linked relation to it’s canvas’s task list. However saying thisRow.[column with the canvas in it] is not a valid reference. I was trying to do some wacky stuff to force it to be a valid reference. It is sad that coda does not allow that to be a valid reference.

What I ended up doing is making a Task Master list (I know its what I should have done from the start) and make a button on the projects table which duplicates a set of “template” rows from the master task list which has linked relation to the projects table. Each canvas is a “view” of the master task list filtered for tasks that are linked to said project.

Conclusion: sharing information between parent table and canvas’s is stupidly difficult.

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