One-to-many relationships: parent, child, and foreign key

Beginner

Understand the most common FileMaker relationship pattern — the one-to-many — by connecting a parent table to a child table through a shared key field.

What you'll learn

What a foreign key is and where it lives (always in the child table)
How to connect two tables in the Relationships Graph
How to verify the relationship is working correctly

A one-to-many relationship links one parent record to any number of child records through a shared key field called the foreign key.

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Identify your primary and foreign keys

Every parent table needs a primary key — a unique identifier for each record. The child table needs a foreign key field that stores the parent's primary key value. Use Get(UUID) as your auto-enter calculation for new primary keys.

FileMaker Script

# In the Customers table (parent):
CustomerID   — Text, auto-enter calculation: Get ( UUID )

# In the Orders table (child):
OrderID      — Text, auto-enter calculation: Get ( UUID )
CustomerID   — Text  (foreign key — stores the parent's CustomerID)

All Relationships lessons Many-to-many relationships with a junction table