Application packages already do create breadcrumb trails
using the site map. It's called ad_context_bar. The best thing is
to set a variable called context_bar and include it in the master
ADP template so the context bar appears in the same place on
each page. Just calling ad_context_bar with one argument (the
page's title) will usually do something reasonable; alternatively
you can customize things a bit further by giving multiple
arguments or just write the context bar by hand.
This is awesome. Can somebody try it and see how it well it
works? Are there any tweaks required to make it work more
reliably? Do we need to include info about how to set this up in
some kind of a style guide?
Changing the root of the context bar: I suppose that
ad_context_bar could be extended to have some configurability.
I'd be wary of doing a database hit to get the configuration data
though, because it happens on every single page.
Is there any way to do this in a way that is less of a drag on
performance? Some way to cache the info or something? It's not
like this parameter is going to change very often.
Adding a context bar to static pages - well just rename
.html to .adp, make sure is in there, and make a .tcl file
which does nothing but set the context_bar variable.
That sounds like more work than a non-programming admin
could do, unless I'm not understanding something correctly.
What I'd like to see is a way that the admin could have the context
bar set properly simply by uploading the pages into the proper
folder or something equally easy. If we want this to be used for
large sites, then no hand programming or even hand setting of
per-page admin parameters should be required.
Utility to view the site map: there are probably some utility
procs to do some of this already.
Ultimately, what I have in mind here is the ability for the
system to dynamically generate all navigation structures,
including menu bars, context bars, and site maps, from such
procs. The first step in that direction is to be able to extract the
hierarchy tree from whatever it is that generates the context bar
and make that tree available to other applications. Would this
require a service contract?
