List of entries is one of the types of Field values.

A list of entries field allows you to create a relationship between one entry and several others. The value of the field becomes a list of links to other entries in your application.

List of entry fields are very similar to Link to entry fields. In both cases, a relationship is created between entries. With a link to entry field, the relationship is one-to-one (one entry links to another), while with a list of entry field, the relationship is one-to-many (one entry links to many others).

If you’re new to working with databases, the purpose of list fields can seem confusing at first. Associating data in one category (or table) with data in another category helps you streamline the structure of your data and reduces duplication.

In a project management application, you might want to track company clients and the contacts at each of those companies. One client may have more than one contact associated with it. On each client’s entry, you could create a separate field for each contact person (“Contact 1”, “Contact 2”, etc.) but that would be cumbersome. It would also make it difficult to add additional details about each contact without cluttering up each client entry.

Instead, the best approach is to create entries for each contact in a “Contact” category, and then add a field to each client called “Contacts” which is a list of contacts that work at that company.

Click on the image at right to see a diagram showing Client entries associated with Contact entries.

A list field is restricted by category. When you change a field to this type, you must choose either to use an existing category in your application, or to create a new one. Entries listed in this field can only be in the chosen category.

(Note that if you later change the category a field lists, the list will be invalid if any of the listed entries are not in the new category.)

When you add a list of entries field to a Table view as a column, you can then also add fields from the listed entries to the view. To learn more about this, read the section on Derived fields.

You can change a field to have a list of entries using the Field configuration.

You must choose an existing category or type the name of a new category of entry that this field will list.

This option tells Dabble how to treat existing data during a “migration” from text to a list field. It is only available when you change a field from one of the other types of fields (and not from a Link to entry).

If you have existing text that uses commas to separate items in a list, and you want Dabble to recognize the comma, you put that character (”,”) into the “Split on” box. When Dabble finds a piece of text with a comma in it, it will split text on either side of the comma into an individual item for the list.

Dabble will search the text for a “split on” character, if any is specified. For each item listed in the text, the following will occur:

• If an entry already exists in the category with the same name as the item text, the entry will be added to the list.

• If an entry does not exist in the category with the same name as the item text, a new entry will be created with that text as its name, and it will be added to the list.

This option affects what entries can be added to the list. If the option is enabled, then entries will disappear from the list of possibilities after they have been chosen once. That is, they can only be listed from one entry. Conversely, if the option is disabled, then an entry can be listed multiple times, from different entries.

Another way of thinking about this is that it allows you to enforce a sense of “ownership”. If enabled, then an entry that lists another entry in this field will “own” that entry — it will not be permitted to be listed anywhere else. This is like a “mother and child” relationship — a child normally only has one mother (biologically speaking anyhow).

An example of when this might be useful is in setting up an invoicing application. You might have a project entry that lists invoices you’ve submitted for that project and you want those invoices to be exclusively linked to this project.

Disabling this option makes it more like a “friend” relationship — one person may list many friends, but each of those people may be also be friends of others concurrently.

If this option is enabled, an “inverse field” will automatically appear on entries that you link to. In this case, there will be a list of entries or Link to entry field on the category you link to. Read more about inverse fields. If you change the list or delete the field, it will be changed or deleted in both places.

If the linked category already exists, you can choose how the entries will be identified in this field. Use the drop-downs to choose fields from the linked category. You can add punctuation or spaces between each field using the text inputs. See entry names for more information.

When you add an existing entry to a list of entries field, the system will offer a drop-down menu showing the available entries, or a text search box, if there are too many to show in a single drop-down. To use the text search box, type one or more letters or numbers and a menu will appear showing matching results. You can use the keyboard (cursor keys and Enter) or the mouse to select which entry to add.