Add references between tables

 

Once you have an app with multiple tables, it's often useful to create connections, known as references, between tables.

For example, an order capture app might contain the following tables:

1. Orders, with one row per order.
2. Customers, with one row per customer.

Each Orders row might reference the Customers table to include the customer name and location. In this case, you would add a Reference and a Lookup column.

References serve three purposes:

1. They allow you to represent relationships. For example, the reference between the Orders row and the Customers row allows you to capture the relationship between an order and the customer who placed that order.
2. They allow you to easily retrieve information from a related row in another table. For example, you can add a Lookup column in the Orders table that references the location of the customer from the Customers table.
3. They allow you to navigate from one row to another. For example, you might retrieve a particular Order row then navigate to the related Customers row.

Each row inside an AppSheet database has a unique Row ID automatically assigned to it. Row IDs act as a key for linking data from one table to another.  This makes it easier to manage data inside the database editor such as linking data across tables using Reference columns.   

You can select a different table key inside the app editor, but before doing so it is important to consider if the table is being referenced. If you change the table key, these references will break since the database will continue to use Row ID as the key. This means if the referenced table does not use Row ID as the key, the column type inside the database should not be a Reference. To learn more, see Row ID.

Add references between tables as described in the following sections:

• Add a Reference column
• Add a Lookup column
• Manage table-to-table permissions

Add a Reference column

To add a reference between tables, add a column of type Reference to a table and select the table to reference from the drop-down list. For example, in the Orders table you can add a Reference to the Customers table.

 

To populate the column rows, double-click in the cell and select the desired row in the list. For example, in the Orders table you can associate a customer with each order.

When using Reference column data types, you can only reference tables within the same database.

 

The row values in the Reference column are populated from the column that is set as the column label in the referenced table.

Add a Lookup column

A Lookup column allows you to access content from a table that is referenced by an existing Reference column in the same table.

For example, you can add a Lookup column to add the Location information to the Orders table based on the customer selected in the Customer column.

The Location row values are populated automatically based on the row values in the Customer column.

Lookup column data types are converted to the type of the column that they reference when used in an AppSheet app.

Manage table-to-table permissions

When you add a reference to a table, read permissions are added to the referenced table to allow access. You can view and manage the permission granted to the referenced tables using the Table-to-Table permissions setting when editing the table settings.