Xataface Depselect Module

Copyright (C) 2011 Steve Hannah [email protected]

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Library General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Library General Public License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.

Synopsis:

The Xataface depselect module adds a "dependent select" widget for use in forms. A dependent select is one whose options are dependent on the state of other widgets in the form. It listens for changes to other selects and updates its own options accordingly.

A common example is a form with select lists for country, province, and city. The options in the "province" select list will depend on which option is selected in the "country" select list. Similarly the options in the "city" widget depend on the "province" selection. The depselect widget is ideal of this scenario as it will live update the options according to the selections in the dependency fields.

Features:

* Live updating of menu options when other widgets are updated.
* "Add" button to add options to a menu (opens internal dialog with new record form).
* Integrated with Xataface's permissions system (options will only be loaded if user is granted view permission on target table).
* Option to override permissions.
* Doesn't require a valuelist.  (May be more efficient for providing options on subsets of very large tables as valuelists are loaded in their entirety every request).

Requirements:

Xataface 1.4 or higher

Installation:

1. Copy the summary directory into your modules directory. i.e.:

modules/depselect

2. Add the following to the [_modules] section of your app's conf.ini file:

modules_depselect=modules/depselect/depselect.php

Usage:

To configure a field to use the depselect widget, just set its fields.ini file widget:type directive to "depselect". You should also set the following directives:

• widget:table : The name of the table from which the options should be pulled
• widget:filters:xyz : Filters to apply to queries to load the options. This can be any valid Xataface GET parameter in accordance with the Xataface URL conventions.
• widget:keycol : (Optional) The name of the column to treat as the id or key column.
• widget:labelcol : (Optional) The name of the column to pull labels from.
• widget:ignore_permissions : (Optional) The user needs 'view' permissions for the records from which the options are populated, unless this directive is set.

Examples:

In the following example we have a city field that is dependent on the province field that is dependent on the country field:

[country_id] widget:type=depselect widget:table=countries

[province_id] widget:type=depselect widget:table=provinces widget:filters:country_id="$country_id"

[city_id] widget:type=depselect widget:table=cities widget:filters:province_id="$province_id"

More Reading:

TBA

Support:

http://xataface.com/forum

Credits:

• This module was developed by Steve Hannah ([email protected]).
• This widget makes heavy use of jQuery to help with DOM interaction. (http://www.jquery.com).
• jQuery UI is used to provide a more user-friendly experience. In particular it's internal dialog module is used for adding records to the depselects. (http://jqueryui.com/)