Forum OpenACS Q&A: category::ad_form::* possible improvement

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1: category::ad_form::* possible improvement
Posted by Antonio Pisano on 10/14/14 05:43 PM
Hello everyone,

I am trying to build a smooth development workflow which will hopefully save me as much coding as possible.

With this idea in mind, I am trying to exploit category::ad_form::* functionalities, to give categorization to my plain acs_objects easily.

Referring to packages/xotcl/generic-procs, we can see that ::Generic::Form embeds this feature when the flag 'with_categories' is specified.

I have successfully applied this feature by mapping a tree to my application package, then using a ::Generic::Form to map a category to my object. The mapping has succeded, as I can verify by querying manually, but when I use the form again, the dropdown list for category is empty: mapped category value is not read from the object and put into form widget, as it may seem.

Am I doing something wrong or there is a little step missing here?

Investigating on my istallation, I've tried creating a procedure called 'category::ad_form::read_categories' that should be put into the edit_request section of an ad_form. The proc reads mapped categories for the objects and sets the proper form fields so the value can be shown. This fixes the issue for me.

Sounds legit?

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2: Re: category::ad_form::* possible improvement (response to 1)
Posted by Antonio Pisano on 10/15/14 02:30 PM
Recapping the issue:

when I create a new object, I can successfully map it to one or more categories using category::ad_form::* machinery.

Documentation for this feature is here: http://www.openacs.org/doc/tutorial-categories.html

However, when I am using the form to edit an existing object, nothing is done to retrieve its category mappings and use them to fill category widgets that are auto-generated. The widget will always be empty, despite the existance of category mappings.

I have filled this gap by adding a procedure called 'category::ad_form::fill_widgets' (refactoring the one from previous message), used to enhance ad_form's edit_request.

I have then applied this proc into ::Generic::Form to the portion in which category management is embedded, so I can use it to categorize my objects.

The change suits for me. I have tested with xotcl-demo-note application to ensure previous logic wouldn't break, so I feel enough confident to commit. The change is extensively commented in the code, so people can trace my reasons.

Best regards