Joomla 1.6 com_content "Directory" type view

[orware]

I've been thinking about using 1.6's com_content for a faculty website
as soon as I can try it out.

So far in 1.6 we're going to have the following views available to us
from the get-go:
- Archived Articles
- Single Article
- List All Categories
- List Articles in a Category
- Single Category
- Featured Articles
- Default Form
- List Featured Articles

I was hoping that we might be able to have an additional view for
com_content for displaying the subcategories of a chosen category in a
directory-like fashion (akin to what we can get via Mosets Tree:
http://demo.mosets.com/tree/).

The use case here would be that a category, named "Faculty", would be
created...then a category for each department would be created within
this category so we'd have:
Faculty
-> Applied Science
-> Business
-> English
-> Science
-> Math
-> Engineering
-> etc.

Then within each of the department categories I could create a
category for each Instructor which they would then be able to add
pages into (and create subcategories for...which brings up the
additional question of whether the ACL will limit users to only
creating subcategories relative to the categories they've been given
access to?).

The reason this would really, really be handy when you think about it
is that it would be a pain really to create menu items and manage them
for each and every instructor (which I could do as well just for URL
purposes, it just wouldn't be convenient I think navigationally to
have this large menu structure displayed within the menu
module)...it'd just make it so much easier if I could create a faculty
Joomla installation, assign this Directory view to the Frontpage, and
then have it display everything right up front. To me it'd probably
make the navigation part a lot easier for students (as well as staff).

When I was playing with 1.6 before the Joomla Dev Conference on the
5th I had wanted to play with some of the existing views but noticed
that a lot of them aren't exactly ready for prime-time yet (I had also
wanted to start working on my ArtCats module conversion for 1.6 so I
was taking a look at the queries as well and some of the mod_content_*
code so that can begin...way back in Las Vegas it had been mentioned
by others that an *auto-populating* module for content would be
nice...which is what ArtCats does...depending on the category you're
on it will display the articles in that category...it was later
extended a bit to support subcategories and their articles as well in
a 1.5 kludgy fashion, but now with 1.6 I can do it 1.6-style
proper ;-).

So I guess I'm asking a few things here:
1. Is help still needed on getting com_content done (or has it been
limbo because of the ACL?)
2. Could I help create this directory view (if it's decided it would
be a good idea to include?)

I hope a few others think this would be a good idea (because I'm
definitely going to need it here at the college...and it might also be
useful in another case I'm thinking about...putting a public domain
book about the First Thirty Years here in the Valley online on a
website :-).

-Omar

[Mark Dexter]

Hi Omar. Would the List All Categories work for you if you could pick the top category to start with? I've been thinking we should have a parameter for that. That way, you could start with ROOT and get everything, or you could start at any category and drill down from there. Mark

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[Andrew Eddie]

Yes, that's sort of the point of the All Categories view to be able to
do like what you see on the JED. By all means, play around with that
view and see what you can come up with.

Regards,
Andrew Eddie
http://www.theartofjoomla.com - the art of becoming a Joomla developer

2009/12/17 Mark Dexter <dexter...@gmail.com>:

[Christophe Demko]

Hi Omar,

> Then within each of the department categories I could create a
> category for each Instructor which they would then be able to add
> pages into (and create subcategories for...which brings up the
> additional question of whether the ACL will limit users to only
> creating subcategories relative to the categories they've been given
> access to?).

With the facility of using plugins which listen to the onPrepareForm
event, you would be able to change the type and display of the
"Parent" field when editing a category. So your users would only see
"their" category subtree. You could also modify the "rules" field
(creating a new field type inherited from JFormFieldRules) to handle a
new right for a category item "able to create subdir". The form
validation system could then verify that they are authorized to save
their categories.

PS: I'm currently working on an extended version of com_categories
which allow more feature for personalized thecategory edit form
(http://joomlacode.org/svn/joomla/development/branches/chdemko)

[Omar Ramos]

Well you guys seemed to have answered my question pretty well :-).

The List All Categories view definitely seems like the best place for what I'm talking about...the view even seems to already have the Category param that Mark mentioned. And since it's the only view that really works on my end at the moment...it does seem to do pretty much I wanted (I had checked it that day too, but I suppose I had forgotten it was more of what I wanted).

For additional parameters, it might be nice if multiple columns could be supported for the listing (just so it could use up more of the horizontal space on the page...being able to disable the description from being displayed would be useful as well), or have a few additional templates for the view that present the information slightly differently without having to override the primary template file (which, while I was looking in the menu item params...there didn't really seem to be an option to choose a different template). When I'm referring to template here I mean the layout files located in the tmpl folder within a view.

An alpha filter would be a nice addition for the List All Categories view as well, but overall I think just having the subcategories in 1.6 opens up many new doors for the com_content views so nothing to complain about really :-).

Thanks guys!

-Omar

[Angie Radtke]

Hi Omar

>  For additional parameters, it might be nice if multiple columns could be supported for the listing

 

Please take a look at the source.
You can choose so much columns as you like.
You only need to style the layout per CSS. I hope that is what you mean.

 

http://test3.run-digital.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=11&Itemid=64
[Unknown] 

 

 

Bye Angie 

 

 

 

 

[Omar Ramos]

The programmatic stuff really isn't a problem for me (I understand that the sky is pretty much the limit in terms of what I can do on my end with the files themselves)...I just like having things configurable/built-in which is why I made the suggestion (and it doesn't help that I don't have a template developer her on-campus to due extra custom work, which means it would end up falling on my shoulders...and since I don't do it everyday it's not something I enjoy doing as much as some of the other work I do so I tend to like it when little things like that are built-in, but that's just me :-).

Thank you for your suggestions!

-Omar

 

 

 

 

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