Pre-qualify a number entry

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1

hello again.

the data is a bit more complex, but i’ll limit the details to pinpoint the challenge i’m facing:

i have 3 data tables: users, items, and slots. i’ve set up the relations and lookups etc so that they’re kinda bound to each other. items are raffle prizes, and slots are ticket numbers. normally i would have populated a card view that users can click on, when selecting their preferred slot. it would have been easy to display and allow/disallow slots that are available vs taken. problem is, some items have 5000 slots, so i’m trying a workaround - i’m letting the user manually input their slot number. i have spent the whole day trying to do some validation (via additional columns including lookups, item+slot combo (template), and even via custom actions upon submission.

in short: im only trying to prevent duplicate slot entries.

i cant do custom code and would really like to get this working purely via glide internal tools. most of the other challenges i encountered (and solved thanks to this community) have been valuable lessons for me, and i really hope i have finally found the right solution for my solo “dev” career path.

any help would be super appreciated. thanks!

2

There are various ways to approach this, but before I offer any advice let me ask a question.

How likely is it that two users might be attempting to select a slot at about the same time?

If there is a chance that might happen, then this is not an easy problem to solve, and you won’t be able to solve it without using something external to Glide.

3

thanks for the prompt feedback.

realistically speaking, very likely everyone will try to take that slot as soon as the event gets published.

assuming that’s not a major concern - how can i implement this purely in glide?

eventually (after test marketing but before it becomes a real problem) - what might you recommend as an external tool to solve it? thanks a lot

4

Okay, if we disregard the potential for race conditions resulting in multiple users claiming the same slot, then the way I would approach it is with a Custom Form. Capture the slot number in a User Specific column, and use that to build a relation to the table where all the taken slots are stored. If the relation is not empty, then the slot is already taken.

For a more robust option that eliminates the possibility of race conditions, you might want to use something like Upstash or Make to manage the allocation of slots. Have a read of the below, and the reply from David:

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5

thanks a lot! will definitely try to make this work. will update the post when done. cheers!