Forum OpenACS Development: Re: TCL API for acs_object_types

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Posted by Don Baccus on
Also ... there's already code to build form elements that exists in the CMS.  Part of the CR Tcl API work being discussed with between Dave Bauer, myself and Jun would include, in my mind at least, exposing that code usefully.

Rather than build ad_form -form snippets from attribute data I was planning on making use of that existing code (which is smart about default widgets for types which can be overridden for individual objects of that type, etc).  There's a bunch of smart code that already exists buried in the CMS and rather than re-invent, my thinking has been to re-use.

Likewise there's already code to fill a form with existing data from the CR views built for CR types.

And you can render an object of a type in HTML using existing code if you only know where to look for it and can figure out the confusing API style.

So a bunch of this stuff is there, waiting to be exposed in human-usable form, and indeed Jun's already exposed quite a bit of it in his BCMS API that we intend to migrate to the CR proper.

This code can be quite easily made to work with base object types I believe, though I won't have time to investigate further for another week and a half, i.e. after my return to the States.