CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

We'd like to have a custom field on the profile that is defined as a selection from a list in a table (where the table will have many more attributes per entry beyond name / value).  That table could be defined within CiviCRM (if there was a way) or in Drupal (6.x), since we have an integrated CiviCRM/Drupal database - either would be fine.

All I can find are:
A) Alphanumeric / Select field options, where the list of options must be typed in (we want to look them up).  In Drupal, the equivalent (that would do what we need) is a CCK text field with a Select list built by PHP code.
B) Contact References, which is a lookup/link to another contact (we want that sort of lookup but to a different table).  In Drupal, the equivalent is a CCK node reference field.

I can't see how to do this in CiviCRM, so
 1) If there is a way, could you please explain how we can? Is it possible to build a custom table in CiviCRM or should it be a Drupal table?  How can we define a lookup to be based on it?
or
 2) If there isn't a built-in way, could you provide some guidance on how to get started customizing CiviCRM's custom field types to add this?

Of course if anyone has done this, would you please share how you did it?

Thank you for the tip.