Question

New to Web2py, so my question might not be too clear. I’m trying to make a shipment tracking page, and I have a simple database with a tracking number and a shipper ID. Following the examples, my application can display and add new records to the shipment db. Now I want to add links to the displayed records that will take you to the carrier’s tracking page for that tracking number. The tracking page URL will be created from a default string for each shipper to which the tracking number will be appended. How can I make the results into links to the appropriate tracking page?

Answer 1

If you are displaying the record via SQLFORM, Crud, SQLTABLE, or SQLFORM.grid, you could set the “represent” attribute of the tracking number field to display a link:

db.define_table('shipper',
    Field('name'),
    Field('url'),
    format='%(name)s')

db.define_table('shipment',
    Field('tracking_number', represent=lambda value, row: A(value,
        _href=row.shipper.url + value)),
    Field('shipper', db.shipper))

This assumes you are storing the shipper URLs in a separate table.