About the gk_parent_entry_id and the gk_parent_form_id entry metas

GravityView version 2.19 introduced the Gravity Forms field, allowing users to embed a form into a View easily. More about that here.

Two pieces of information are stored in the website database whenever a submission is made using this embedded form. These are called, in the Gravity Forms lingo, entry meta. They are information associated with a form submission that is not visible in the dashboard.

Gravity Forms already associates lots of other different entry meta with each form submission; They are used to keep track of the date the submission was made (date_created), the ID of the form where the submission was made (form_id), the page where the form was embedded (source_url), etc.

Now that we know what is an entry meta, the new Gravity Forms field stores two of them:

gk_parent_entry_id, which records the current ID of the entry where the form was embedded. Whether in a row on the Multiple Entries page or on a Single Entry page.

The gk_parent_form_id records the ID of the form used as the primary data source of the View where this form is embedded. Remember that each View has one main form as its data source.

These two entry meta can be used in two ways:

1) When you embed a form to collect a review and display those reviews on the same page. Here's one example of that use case.

2) When using the Multiple Forms extension to create a View using two joined forms in a parent/child relationship:

These two entry meta can be used to establish a parent/child (or one to many) relationship between entries from different forms.