Database oriented plugin or snippet?

hi folks, newbie scott here, though i have built 4 sites with modX

not sure if this is the best forum for it, but here goes....

so - i want to have a database presented on a webpage with different form views possible, as well as an entry form. i know it’s certainly possible to do a web form as a snippet but most of these are oriented to sending emails, and i want this to go into a grid based list with links to individual records. none of this is difficult for PHP or java coders but i am neither. i can tweak existing code but i was curious there was anything out there, possibly in javascript or PHP which could work for me.

the Repository site (which IMHO is NOT as usable as the old site was - humph!) can only find links to two products which look promising. they are pubkitblog, and possibly makeform (though it’s very old). whatever happened to the tag cloud - that was useful...

so the form views i’d want to do look like this:

lists of venues:
http://www.lequanninh.net/improvdb/?id_pays=1&liste=ok&lang=en

and names link to individual records which look like this:
http://www.lequanninh.net/improvdb/?fiche=ok&id_pays=1&id_lieu=703&tri=villes.ville_en&lang=en

on top of this there would be an entry form to add or update records. probably semi-secure access in a separate area of the website.

overall this should be trivial for someone using php w/ mysql but as i said before i’m not good at coding from scratch.

any ideas? all help vastly appreciated.

scott

You could use a Datagrid TV!
http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,31363.msg190208.html#msg190208

Also see #2 http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,36714.0.html

your example is interesting, and could work reasonably well. haven’t had much experience in TVs yet but i’ve read about how they’re implemented.

i’m also curious about eform2db - is that in a moderately stable form? doesn’t seem downloadable from authors site and the Extras (formerly the repository cant find anything). the fact you made something in dec2008 with it is promising. is it evolution friendly?

Edit:OK i see the snippet code for eform2db and your example code seems a good place to start although i need a few more fields. i started reading about a new module called dbedit. could that one also work or is that one only for the manager environment? i tried following the thread but it wasn’t clear.

also how could i get a single exploded record view instead of a grid view? does datagrid accomodate in larger size page displays of single records or is that best left to another type of TV or snippet or plugin?

It’s just the snippet to copy from here: http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,8111.0.html

As described by Pixelchutes, you can change the INSERT

to UPDATE (or DELETE)

It runs together with stable and EVO friendly eForm snippet!

Answer Yes!
Give an example of how your table will look like!

as i had said before:

lists of venues:
http://www.lequanninh.net/improvdb/?id_pays=1&liste=ok&lang=en

and names link to individual records which look like this:
http://www.lequanninh.net/improvdb/?fiche=ok&id_pays=1&id_lieu=703&tri=villes.ville_en&lang=en

so, two form views, one for the organizations as a list, and the other for single records.

i’d need about 12-14 fields, all could be straight text fields. your example of the phone list shows only 3 but the modification doesn’t seem too hard.

i am curious about a post i found by ChuckTrukk:
http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,14957.0.html

post#9-where he discusses an easy way to set up records as documents using extra TVs for the added fields needed and then formatting them w/ Ditto. now our database won’t be huge - i’d estimate maybe 100-150 records total, so as far as ModX, that sound like an easy amount of pages to deal with. this post was in 2007, so i’m always looking for the most reliable and newest way if possible.

your way seems fine except for not being able to format a single record form view - but i bet it’s probably not that hard to get that to happen...

thoughts? i probably don’t have time to work on this immediately - this is a side project from my day job so i won’t be able to get going on it for a week or so. but all suggestions are encouraged!

scott

Yes! Go for TEXT TVs instead!
//The Datagrid I suggested was a TV

TV’s are extra input fields when editing a resource.
Then in the template you just add them the same way as with
Document Objects (e.g. [*content*]) -> ...<td>[*mytv*]</td>
and they dynamically go get the data for the requested page.

http://www.sottwell.com/tv-input-types.html

mrhaw’s TV solution is probably the simplest to implement because it relies on existing functionality. However, if your data is already in a normalized database outside of MODx (or if you ever want to take it outside of MODx), then it’s probably not the best solution.

I’ve been working on just such a Snippet, but I know it’s reinventing the wheel in a lot of ways. It does provide an accessible way to format custom database results, however.

@Everett that sounds really interesting!
MODx need new wheels!

I plan to post what I have soon... but I really need to clean it up and document it. It’s been a huge learning experience for me to create a (simple) MVC framework. My suspicion is that much of what I worked out can be done easier in Revolution.