Create record in linked field of table

[Justin_Yorick]

Part of my custom APP takes a number of different user inputs from a UI, and writes some of the resultant information as a new record in a table. In particular I want to do the following:

• Write a string value to a linked field in an existing table

• The string value to be passed is already guaranteed to exist as one of the linked options (since the user selected from a Select menu which is in turn populated from the table.

*There are some other fields which need to be written as part of this record. The code looks something like the following.

`` let machineNameField=tableTasksByMachineNumber.getFieldByNameIfExists(‘Machine Name’);
let machineNamesRecord=useRecords(tableTasksByMachineNumber,machineNameField);
let machineNamesList=machineNamesRecord.map(record=>
{return(record.getCellValueAsString(machineNameField))});
let machineNamesListFormatted=machineNamesList.map(x=>{return({label: x, value:x})});`

                  Machine Selection
                  <Select
                  value={machineId}
                  options={machineNamesListFormatted}
                  onChange={setMachineId}
                  />

// at this point the machineID variable is set by the useState react hook.

//I want to create the new record on clicking a confirmation dialog, as shown in the below snippet for my event handler

onConfirm={() => {

                        tableMaintenanceTickets.createRecordsAsync([

                          {'fields': {

                            "Machine Number / Station": [{machineId}]

                          }}]

                        ),

When I run this code I get the following error:
![image|700x183](upload://qPHyZTjvVIwk8Oof7T8himQnCdJ.png)

NOTE: I can create the record when I pass an empty array through the createRecordsAsync method.

Any help/insight would be much appreciated

[Justin_Yorick]

For some reason the attached screenshot is not loading. below is a copy of the error message I am receiving.

Error: Invalid record format. Please define field mappings using a `fields` key for each record definition object
    at https://localhost:9000/__runFrame/bundle.js:11007:53
    at Array.map (<anonymous>)
    at Table.createRecordsAsync$ (https://localhost:9000/__runFrame/bundle.js:11000:41)
    at tryCatch (https://localhost:9000/__runFrame/bundle.js:84105:40)
    at Generator.invoke [as _invoke] (https://localhost:9000/__runFrame/bundle.js:84335:22)
    at Generator.next (https://localhost:9000/__runFrame/bundle.js:84160:21)
    at tryCatch (https://localhost:9000/__runFrame/bundle.js:84105:40)
    at invoke (https://localhost:9000/__runFrame/bundle.js:84196:20)
    at https://localhost:9000/__runFrame/bundle.js:84231:11
    at new Promise (<anonymous>)

[Billy_Littlefie]

Hi @Justin_Yorick ,

Sorry you’ve been running into issues here. From your provided code sample, it looks like you’re formatting the createRecordsAsync argument correctly (docs here), so I’m scratching my head a bit. Is it possible there’s another createRecordsAsync call somewhere that’s malformatted? Out of curiosity, what version of the @airtable/blocks SDK are you using in your package.json?

I tried reproing the error on v1.8 but the following sample code worked as expected:

import { initializeBlock, useBase } from "@airtable/blocks/ui";
import React from "react";

function HelloWorldApp() {
	const base = useBase();
	const table = base.tables[0];

	function handleClick() {
		table.createRecordsAsync([{ fields: { Name: "Test" } }]);
	}

	return <button onClick={handleClick}>Create record</button>;
}

initializeBlock(() => <HelloWorldApp />);

EDIT: It does look like there may be a formatting issue with the cell value for “Machine Number / Station” field - if that’s a linked record field, each object will need to be formatted with an id property (see example in docs here). That said, I don’t think this issue is what’s causing the error message you’re seeing - more of an FYI

[Justin_Yorick]

Thanks for the quick reply @Billy_Littlefield !

• Looks like I am running @airtable/blocks: 1.7.2

So far I do not have any other calls to the createRecordAsync method

From what I’ve seen in other post, I think the issue may be related to the fact that this is a linked field.
The documentation says that to write to linked fields, I need to reference the record Id. I’m not sure what this means since the whole point of this particular function is to create a new record.

Perhaps this is referencing the record Id of the linked record(s) which are the selectable options for this field? If this is the case, do I need to pass the record from the linked record?

Eg,
lets say I have two tables. my function is creating records in table 1. The values of the linked cells are records/fields in table 2.

If if I have option A, option B and option C as possible linked values from table 2, do I need to reference the record Ids (from table two) I wish to write in table 1 when I use the createRecordAsync method?

[Billy_Littlefie · Accepted solution]

Hey @Justin_Yorick - correct, when setting linked value cells you’ll need the record IDs for the records you’re linking to. This also means that the records you’re linking to need to already exist (in order to have an id). You can grab the id directly from the record record.id. For example, using some of the code you have above, you could do something like this to format the options for the <Select>:

let machineNameField = tableTasksByMachineNumber.getFieldByNameIfExists(‘Machine Name’);
let machineNameRecords = useRecords(tableTasksByMachineNumber);
let machineNameOptions = machineNameRecords.map(machineNameRecord => ({
    label: machineNameRecord.getCellValueAsString(machineNameField),
    value: machineNameRecord.id
}));

after which machineId should reference the recordId for the selected machine record. You may need to mix in some null checking to ensure that e.g. a user selected a machine, but hopefully this is helpful. Here is the docs section for linked record cell values.

Cheers,
Billy

[Justin_Yorick]

@Billy_Littlefield
This was the issue!!

Thanks again for the expedient assist