Custom widgets?

Archived from the Xataface Users forum.

gorzek — Tue Jul 15, 2008 7:47 am

I’ve been making good progress so far. I think, at this point, I need to figure out how to make custom widgets. One should be easy: a hidden “autouser” field. Basically, all it does is take the currently logged-in user and makes their user id populate a hidden “users_id” field. This is to automatically associate a user to the records they create without them having to select their own username from a select box. If there is an easier way to do this, I’d like to know.

In any case, though, what is the simplest way to make a custom widget, and how would you then use it? I looked at the examples in HTML/QuickForm, but none of them looked all that simple. Just a “bare bones” custom widget is what I’d like to see, if possible.

shannah — Tue Jul 15, 2008 9:31 am

Hi Gorzek,

First, the easy way to do what you want with the username is to either:

  1. Implement a beforeSave() trigger that sets this value.

or

  1. Implement a fieldname__default() method in your delegate class to provide a default value for the field.

Option 1:

Code: Select all
function beforeInsert(&$record){     $record->setValue('ownerID', getUserID()); }

(Assuming you have defined a function called getUserID() that obtains the ID of the currently logged in user.

Option 2:

Code: Select all
function ownerID__default(){     return getUserID(); }

Both examples you can use a hidden widget for.

On the larger scale, if you do want to create custom widgets (for any purpose whatsoever) there are two ways to do it.

  1. A one-off solution for your application. (easy)
  2. Create a reusable widget. (more complex)

For a one-off solution all you have to do is implement the fieldname_widget block for the field in question. E.g. to accomplish what you want to do with the username you could do:

Code: Select all
function block__ownerID_widget(){     echo '<input type="hidden" value="'.getUserID().'">'; }

Creating a reusable widget is a little more complex. A simple widget can be created by simply extending HTML_QuickForm_element (see HTML/QuickForm for some custom widgets that have been created for Xataface or lib/HTML/QuickForm for examples of widgets that are distributed with HTML_QuickForm .

In order to keep the widgets decoupled from the Xataface framework (so that they can be used outside of Xataface) i have tried not to use any Xataface specific calls inside any widget definitions. However you can create a wrapper that Xataface uses to create the widget at runtime (see Dataface/FormTool for examples of these wrappers).

I hope to get some documentation on custom widgets out at some point, but for now it would be best to just look at the existing widgets and use them as a base.

Best regards

Steve

gorzek — Tue Jul 15, 2008 12:55 pm

I think that’s the information I was looking for. I should have thought of the events! I’m already using some of them to make associated records.

Now I understand why the widgets were difficult to parse: no coupling with Xataface! I will probably stick with one-off widgets, for now. That’s probably the least trouble.

I greatly appreciate all your help!