setting template for a new resource: FC, plugin, or both?

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450 Posts

jrotering Reply #1, 12 years, 7 months ago

Here's what I want to do: set the template for a new resource based on the parent resource. Not necessarily the template that is *used* by the parent resource (not a simple 'inherit template' concept), but a template that may optionally be specified by the parent template. For example, I want all children of the resource "Meetings" to use the Meetings template (even though the Meetings resource itself does not).

I know that Form Customization sets allow me to do this with constraints. I can explicitly create an FC set that sets the template to "Meetings" when the parent resource is "Meetings".

The problem is, I don't want to have to explicitly set up a new FC set each time this situation arises. Way too much administrative overhead, man.

What I'd like to do is have a TV called "childTemplate" attached to my templates, so that a user can specify that all children of the current resource should use template X.

So my thought was to write a Plugin that would do the following:

fire either on 'OnDocFormPreRender' or 'OnDocFormRender' (I'm not sure which is appropriate)
(for "new" resources only) determine the parent resource, and check to see whether a childTemplate was specified there
if a childTemplate was specified in the parent, set that as the template for the new resource.

The first problem I ran into is that $resource is null for new resources when the 'OnDocFormPrerender' and 'OnDocFormRender' events fire.

(Shaun says this is not the case as of Revo 2.2, which would change things considerably).

I was able to figure out the parent by using $_GET['parent'] instead of $resource->get('parent').
However, I am not able to use $resource->set('template', $tpl), because, again, the resource is null.

So that's where I'm at with my original question, which is "how would I write a plugin to set the template for a new resource?"

However, after thinking all of this through a bit more, I'm wondering if a different approach would be better. Perhaps instead of writing the plugin described above, I should instead write one that

fires on 'OnDocFormSave',
sees if "childTemplate" was modified (so we're talking about a user editing the parent resource here)
dynamically creates an FC set if necessary

In other words, specifying a template in "childTemplate" would dynamically create an FC set with the appropriate parent constraint.

Is that an insane and convoluted thought? Is it even doable?

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BobRay Reply #2, 12 years, 7 months ago

I think you're on the right track. OnBeforeDocFormSave seems like the place to do it (though OnDocFormSave would work too if you re-save the resource). I don't see the need for any FC rules.

Something like this should do it:

<?php
/* Connect to OnBeforeDocFormSave */

/* Leave this test out of you want to autoupdate when the TV changes in the parent */
if ($mode === modSystemEvent::MODE_NEW) {  
    $parentObj = $resource->getOne('Parent');
  
     if ($parentObj) {
           $childTemplate = $parentObj->getTVValue('childTemplate');

            if ($childTemplate) {
                    $resource->set('template', $childTemplate);
            }
     }
}

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jrotering Reply #3, 12 years, 7 months ago

Quote from: BobRay at Sep 08, 2011, 06:13 PM

I think you're on the right track. OnBeforeDocFormSave seems like the place to do it (though OnDocFormSave would work too if you re-save the resource). I don't see the need for any FC rules.

That would work if what I wanted to do was just control how the template was set when the user saved the resource. But I want to force the use of said template when the user initially edits the new resource.

So I either need to A) find a way to force the template onto the new resource during OnDocFormPrerender or OnDocFormRender, or B) rely on FC rules (which I may or may not be able to create dynamically with an entirely different plugin).

Does that make sense?

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BobRay Reply #4, 12 years, 7 months ago

It does, but the code I suggested will simply ignore the user's input and use the correct template. Wouldn't that be good enough? You could hide the template field with Form Customization.

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jrotering Reply #5, 12 years, 6 months ago

I just figured out a solution to this that meets my requirements (shows the template I want upon creating a new resource):

if ($mode == 'new') {

$_REQUEST['template'] = 13;

}

Adding a 'template' specification into the REQUEST array upon DocFormPrerender or DocFormRender gets it to render the resource form with the correct template.

39 Posts

boundaryfunctions Reply #6, 12 years, 4 months ago

Maybe a little late, but:
I looked for this for a long time and thanks to your helpful discussion here, I was able to make a working plugin for this purpose:

https://gist.github.com/1474540

Pretty short, but already enough to set the default template when creating a ressource to a TV of the parent node.

I'm planning to extend this a little when there's some more time, e.g. recursive searching for parents that define the TV and support for options.
Any suggestions on this are appreciated.

48 Posts

herooutoftime Reply #7, 10 years, 10 months ago

Hi,

found this thread, so I thought it would be the best place for my question as well.
I want to set the parent property on 'OnDocFormRender' but I can't figure out how to do that.

My approach is based on @boundaryfunctions:

$props = array(
  'template'  => $modx->getOption('A system setting storing the template ID'),
  'parent'    => $modx->getOption('A system setting storing the parent ID'),
);
$modx->controller->setProperties($props);

That's not working as I expected.

When looking through the controller classes in manager/controllers/default/resource/ I came up with another approach:

$placeholders['parent'] = (int) INT;
$placeholders['parentname'] = (string) STRING;

OR

$scriptProperties['parent'] = (int) INT;
$scriptProperties['parentname'] = (string) STRING;

What am I missing? Thanks for any help.

48 Posts

herooutoftime Reply #8, 10 years, 10 months ago

Hi @BobRay,

I received an email that you responded to my comment, but I don't see it here. Did you remove it?
I should mention that it was for mgr context, not for web...

Thanks

24,544 Posts

BobRay Reply #9, 10 years, 10 months ago

Yes, I removed it because I realized that I misread the event name and my reply didn't make any sense.

How about using Form Customization to set the default parent and template IDs?

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herooutoftime Reply #10, 10 years, 10 months ago

Yeah, FC would work. Though I want to make it work with transport packages and I have absolutely no clue how to get this done via build/resolvers or what's responsible for this...

Is 'MyComponent' capable of this task or do you have any knowledge on bringing this to package level?