I currently use Jot for maintaining feeding & health records for reptiles. At the time, Jot appeared to be the best thing to use. Ditto was my next option and gives me the flexibility I am looking for, but it was too much trouble making a new document per event - I would have thousands of pages by the years end. I am not good with code, but I can fix this and that and mod / tweak stuff to a certain degree. I would like more flexibility with the records and I am considering a new system.
I would like to be able to have fully custom fields (like tv’s) and the ability to present the data in various ways. And of course what else do we do with data? We use it to make more data - nothing fancy like charts and graphs, but simple stuff like calculate average days between feedings, days until next feeding and such.
I really love modx and everything else is too limited, or too complicated for me. The way I have things now is that every animal has a page and the jot records are displayed on that page, works great as long as I enter everything in chronological order! But like I said, I want to do more than look at the data. I have spent many weeks working on code suggested to me for various things but it’s just a big mess.
I need something like jot, but with the ability to do more with the data... not sure if I am being clear but I would like to hear what everyone has to say.
Thanks!
-
☆ A M B ☆
- 24,524 Posts
Do you want it on the front-end or the back-end? Either way it sounds like you’ll be using AJAX. The extjs library is a bit more complex to learn in the beginning, but more than pays for the effort. Take a look at some of their
demos.
-
☆ A M B ☆
- 24,524 Posts
I would not use TVs. I would create a new database table and use an editable data grid for it.
The problem with TVs comes in if you want to search or sort. It becomes very awkward, as you have to access several tables to get from the document to its tvs’ values. In a case like this, a custom table is much more efficient.
I enjoy building extjs data management modules; if you like I can give you a hand, as long as there is no time constraint. I can’t work for long at one time and have to rest my eyes after every work session.
A special print-out page (pdf perhaps) would be good for the export.
-
☆ A M B ☆
- 24,524 Posts
Why is the whole site private? This is fascinating... you can control access to sensitive material; perhaps allowing access to the pages but only displaying the AJAX grid to a logged-in manager user.
I know TV’s are not the solution, but the nature of them, setting data types and drop-downs, date pickers and whatnot. I know there is much better access control, but I threw this site together in about 30 minutes. Since it is just two people accessing it, I was not concerned with much of that. The whole site is sensitive material because we can not reveal what genetics the animals have or even the quantity.
I have tons of time to focus on this site and no deadline... the worst part will be transferring the records from one system to another.
ok I see there is a GNU license. I downloaded the package and I will need to look over it so I can figure out where to start!
-
☆ A M B ☆
- 24,524 Posts
You know this is exactly what I love about Modx.
I was just stumbling around the posts, not looking for anything in particular, when I came actross this post and followed Susan’s links to the extjs.
Brilliant, so many things there I want that I didn’t even know I wanted.
Content Creator and Copywriter
well I am easily confused so I am stuck at "The Snippet" or I understand that and get lost at "And the actual work is done in the external .php file." and since I get lost there, nothing past that clicks for me.
