Changing Document ID

IS there any way to change a document ID ? Short of going into mySQLadmin and manually editing tables?

thanks

No, and be careful when doing so as there can be other resources linked to document IDs, like TVs.

If you’re doing it to make the Document Tree look neater, don’t! You’ll get used to it. You’ll serve no practical purpose by doing it, and might break parts of your site.

Arg! Is it possible I am being told there is something that can’t be done in MODx???? Unheard of!!!

Darn. It would be great to have something like that in the Doc Manager Module. My IDs are a mess.

Quote from: danzg at Jul 20, 2008, 06:30 PM

Arg! Is it possible I am being told there is something that can’t be done in MODx???? Unheard of!!!

Darn. It would be great to have something like that in the Doc Manager Module. My IDs are a mess.

You can definitely do it (people have), but there are certain risks and the improvement is entirely cosmetic. Most of us resisted the urge and learned to live with the document IDs we have. One solution is to reuse the document IDs by overwriting existing documents rather than deleting them.

If you really can’t resist, the safest way is to just create a new MODx install and recreate your documents in the order you want.

The document IDs are generated automatically by MySQL when the document is created; the ID field is the primary key and is auto-incremented. If you accidentally duplicate one, you can cause all kinds of havoc. Not to mention getting your TVs all messed up, and possibly your site start, error page and unauthorized page settings. Or if you have login page settings for web login or for individual users.

Quote from: danzg at Jul 20, 2008, 06:30 PM

My IDs are a mess.

How’s that a problem? It’s just a unique identifying number with no other significance really.

I understand that IDs must be unique, may be links from documents etc.
BUT
Sometimes site admininstrator may create new document, then move it to other place or delete document,
and in result - first document have ID 7, next ID 14, and then ID 8.
When user navigating by site, page adress look like something unsorted, chaotic, user may to think that this site is not proffesional.

So, i think, this feature needed.

You basically have four choices here:

1. Write a module that would renumber the documents and correct all the references to them. It would be a nightmare to write and could easily miss references that would mysteriously bite you later on and be extremely hard to diagnose.

2. Delete all the documents and re-create them in the correct order. Repeat whenever you don’t like the current sequence.

3. Explain to the user why the IDs are not in sequence (only necessary for manager users -- web users never see the IDs).

4. Design the whole site ahead of time and carefully create the documents in the correct order so the IDs *are* in sequence.

Take your pick. 

Most of us have opted for number 3.

Quote from: cept at Jul 24, 2008, 01:49 AM

I understand that IDs must be unique, may be links from documents etc.
BUT
Sometimes site admininstrator may create new document, then move it to other place or delete document,
and in result - first document have ID 7, next ID 14, and then ID 8.
When user navigating by site, page adress look like something unsorted, chaotic, user may to think that this site is not proffesional.

So, i think, this feature needed.

Well, I always turn on friendly URLs and there you have an option to use the alias for the friendly URL. So all the user will see is yoursite.com/news, yoursite.com/about etc. - if you give your docs sensible unique aliases.

This is waaaay better to let them ponder over a random number and the user will think, wow, this is so professional, not even an extension in the URL. You can even have the document path in the URL, like yoursite.com/news/latest, but then you have to be careful about using absolut paths for images and stuff in your content and templates.