NewsManager

Hello,

I played a bit with the NewsManager that enables a web user to edit/delete posts directly via the front-end. xyzvisual has started this but I found the snippet far from optimal: no templates, no chunks, no customization whatsoever, no documentation.

With this slight modification I try to adjust that. However, as I’m new to modx, I would like some comments and eventually some design guidelines:
- I use templates to personalize the layout
- I use chunks to provide the labels for the various actions
- per default the layout uses buttons, should it be better to use links?

Thanks for any ideas/help

Ronald

EDIT:
Sep 25, 2005:
- Final release, downloaded to the repository.
- Added documentation

Todo:
- Add language support?

hi,

a great addition for a first post

I’d like to test it but I was unable to unzip it with OSX.
Could the archive be corrupted

:-)

This is great news, xyzvisual plugin and snippet are always very interresting but I have never used one since I can’t make them work. I am no coder, I’ll let the dev guys help you out on the code part, but the principle of MODx snippet usually is :
- flexible templating : that means using chunks as templates and define placeholders
- parameters : those allow to customize input variables
- documentation : a few samples, a detailes review of which parameters can be used and how.

I’ll definitely give a look at this, since I consider it to be a real candidate to the main MODx distro. Web users should be able to edit content, and currently QuickEdit only allow manager users to edit content from the front end thus alternatives are very much welcome...

Edit : I gave the file a quick look, it seems you got this right on first strike, it’s very nicely put together, lots of configuration option, chunk templates, detailed parameter instructions : I like it ! Great contribution, now I have to test it Bundled documentation is as good as it gets. Really, a nice job

@Heliotrope : I succesfully unzipped it with BOM Archive Helper / Mac OS X, what did you use ? Stuffit Expander ?

heliotrope, when that happens to me I (begrudgingly) go to stuffit expander and it typically will open them if OS X’s built-in archiving tool doesn’t.

thx for the tips.

Everithing is fine now.

:-)

Hello,

Thanks for the entusiasm. If there’s anything not going as planned, don’t hesitate to tell me (or adjust it

I have now updated NewsManager with the &clearcache parameter to do just that.

The NewsEditor is another small modification of NewsPublisher: it accepts a $_POST[’editid’] in input and will pre-load the fields with the values from that document. When you save the document it will update the old one instead of creating a new one. ATTENTION: if you use a &formtpl be aware that you must make a second form and pass as &edittpl. This form must have an hidden input field: <input name="editid" type="hidden" value="[+editid+]" />. This field tells the NewEditor that it must actually update an old document instead of creating a new one.

This should make editing from the front-end complete!

Good night,

Ronald

hi thanks for your work.

Hello,

Another small update. I tested the NewsManger and NewsEditor on my site an they seem to work quite correctly. I have not tested every feature, however.

• The NewsEditor now doesn’t have the &edittpl parameter anymore as I figured out that I could include the ’<input type="hidden" name="editid" value="[+editid+]" />’ field also in the &formtpl without confusing the logic.
• I included also an example template variable: this should be copied into the ’Default value’ of the template variable in order to have the original value of the news when editing.

I plan to make a nice .html documentation with an example just to make clear how the snippets work together.

Have fun,

Ronald

Somehow I cannot make NewsEditor work.

Steps:
1. Create page with default template and following content ("Basic usage" from in-code documentation
[[NewsEditor? &folder=`2`]]
(where 2 is existing "Blog" folder from demo site)
2. I open this page and NewsEditor default form appears
3. I populate ALL fields, press "Submit" and I have roundtrip to server and back
4. When I look in admin, new page is not created in "Blog" folder.

Am I missing something obvious?

Call the snippet uncached using [!...!] or set the page to not cacheable. Its needed for the post data tm be processed in snippets.