Help: Many to Many Relationship

Design help CMS
1

Hi,

Is it possible to make Many to Many Relationship with webflow ?

E.g
Collections
Cities ( NYC , LA , DC )
Jobs ( Doctors , Lawyers , Engineers )

Jobs for [Doctors] in [NYC]
Jobs for [Lawyers] in [LA]

Mutli Referance filed is not exactly Many to Many Relationship!

I hope someone help

Here is my public share link: LINK
(how to access public share link)

2

Seems possible, see https://experts.webflow.com

Find freelance Webflow designers and agencies | Webflow Experts

3

Thanks, but it is not the same. This is one-to-many relationship not many-to-many (Doctors in LA, Engineers in LA) and so on. @Waldo @PixelGeek

1 Like
4

Any news on this subject? Is it possible to create many to many relationships with webflow?

@Zozo any news ?

5

2023… any updates for many to many CMS solutions in Webflow?
Any code soltutions?

1 Like
6

Use an xref pattern.

  • Collection 1 is whatever
  • Collection 2 is whatever
  • Xref is a collection which contains two multirefs, one to Collection 1, one to Collection 2

Keep in mind multirefs have lots of limitations, and only a few strategic benefits.
Often I’ll make that cross-reference table use single-refs, which means a lot more rows, but also much more powerful filtering and sorting control.

7

So the Xref collection is sometimes called a ‘link’ table which is used to implement the many to many relationship. it just has the two fields which are singlref pointers to the ref/key of Collection 1 and Collection 2. (I did this in Firebase and it works well)

The problem with this is Webflows commercial positioning… even at the ENTERPRISE level, Webflow restricts paying customers to 40 CMS Collections. This is far too restrictive. Even a medium sized DB which wants to implement many to many collections in this way is easily going to exceed that. Webflow needs to increase the number of CMS collections allowed. (They have probably lost large potential customers who have seen that restriction and moved on from Webflow as a potential solution)

8

The CMS was never really designed as a DB, and Webflow isn’t an app-building platform so that makes some sense.

I’d expect on Enterprise, any limit can be broken, but if you’re trying to build a more complex system I’d take a different approach.

Take for example an LMS ( learning management system ), which I build sometimes for schools and educational institutions. If you want to do this on a Webflow-hosted site, you could approach it as;

  • Course directory, categories, and lesson content all go in the CMS
  • Student list, and course access, are managed in a membership system
  • Student-specific information, like lessons completed, and homework uploads, are stored in a 3rd party database… Supabase, Airtable, Xano… and you build APIs to retrieve and update that content.

Another approach is to use Webflow to design your interface, which is where it’s strong, and then you use Devlink to export it as a React app, and host it elsewhere with your direct database integrations.

I do agree though, can you imagine if Webflow added;

  • A full db option
  • Integrated VS code
  • User-specific data storage model

Whoa.

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9

Yes starting to see that now… although they have got logic/work flows etc now so maybe not too far away?

I just think that even if I’m building a larger standard CMS based site, as a paying customer, 40 Collections is a bit tight… especially for the higher tiers. A lot of potential “CMS only” customers must have looked at that on the pricing page and thought… “What if we go over that in the future? Webflow is not for us”

10

No workflow support, e.g. editorial processes, except possibly in the enterprise product. Logic unfortunately was abandoned as a project and released from beta a year ago.

I think Webflow’s realized that for serious devs, the devlink / React approach is much more versatile and removes most of the serious limitations in using Webflow as part of an app-stack.

But it would be awesome to have a completely native solution for lightweight apps. I haven’t seen any movement in that direction, but the growth of components and CMS bindable custom attributes have been very helpful as client-side development hooks.

Probably, but 40 is a lot. The 10k record limit is probably more significant, although enterprise allows more. I’ve built entire education systems in 20 collections.