you can use a list:string field which will store values in a Python list. then if user type "I am alergic to : peanut" and "I like to eat : banana" you have a list with
["I am alergic to : peanut", "I like to eat : banana"] Internally dal stores a pipe | separated string in db. records = db(query).select() for row in records: for item in row.custom: print 'user defined %s with value %s' % item.split(':') note you will need to create a custom valudator to ensure that each value in custom field is separated with : this is the easiest way. may be not the best. http://zerp.ly/rochacbruno Em 24/10/2011 06:47, "seongjoo" <seongjoo....@gmail.com> escreveu: > Hello, > > I have an application that has adding user-defined field functionality. > There is a basic set of information fields user might need to fill in to > submit the data. User can also define his/her own information field. For > example, user can type in user-defined field name and its value: 'I > am allergic to": "peanut, cat". > > When an application needs to store arbitrary user defined data, I > understand that NoSQL might be needed instead of RDBMS. But I just want to > survey if there is a good way to do this without moving too far away from > web2py DAL.Thank you. >