Rather than creating custom tables (because custom tables now can have an impact on licensing cost, unless you utilize , I might suggest you look into using the Model and Model category tables to control the model names, and distinguish between "Spare parts" and "Models". Then, to make them dependent, you can use something like this:
There are a couple of moving parts in order to get dependent variables on a catalog item. This approach will walk through how to do so where the second variable is a select box, lookup select box or reference variable.
Variables Requirements:
There is a dependency on their being some mechanism for the first variable value being reference-able in relation to the second.
Ex1: Variable 1: Location reference variable, Variable 2: Building reference variable, where building records have a reference to the Location table.
Ex2: Variable 1: Select box of categories, Variable 2: Lookup select box of subcategories. (My approach for these is, rather than add them a select box using the question_choice table, I add them directly to the sys_choice table, which has a field OOB for "Dependent Value". The "Lookup value field" should be "Sys ID", and the "Lookup label field(s)" should be "label". For each subcategory, the dependent value should be the *value* (not label) of the corresponding category).
Dynamic Filtering Setup:
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Write a script include function that takes a parameter (which will be the first variable's value) to query the reference table of the second variable, and return a stringified encoded query based on that query.
Ex:
var VarDependencyUtils = Class.create();
VarDependencyUtils.prototype = {
initialize: function() {
},
catSubCatFilter: function(categoryValue) {
var choices = new GlideRecord('sys_choice');
choices.addQuery('name', 'question_choice');
choices.addQuery('element', 'subcategory');
choices.addQuery('dependent_value', categoryValue);
choices.query();
var choicesArr = [];
while (choices.next()){
choicesArr.push(choices.sys_id + '');
}
var returnQuery = 'sys_idIN' + choicesArr.join();
return returnQuery;
},
type: 'VarDependencyUtils'
};
-
We need to tell the system that the first variable has a dependency on it. To do this, in the "Default Value" tab (at least this is usually where it is), we need to add the following to the "Variable attributes" field:
ref_qual_elements=subcategory
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For the second variable, we also need to tell the system that this variable is dependent on the first. Following the same navigation as the previous step, add the following to the "Variable attributes" field:
ref_qual_elements=category
-
Finally, in the "Type Specifications" tab (again, this is usually where this field is), we need to add the following to the "Reference qual" field:
javascript:new VarDependencyUtils().catSubCatFilter(current.variables.category);
Voila! You now have a variable that is dependent on another!
