Selecting multiple objects at once for object relations
Selecting multiple objects at once for object relations
Saturday 11 March 2006 3:27:02 pm - 2 replies
I have some questions about the Object Relations datatype and the Enhanced Object Relation datatype.
1. I would like to be able to specify a starting location to browse for objects. Now it always starts in the root folder of the content tree. I always have to switch to Media folder first when I need to select an Image object. Is there a way to specify a location for browsing?
2. The Object Relations datatype only lets you select one object at a t ime, using the radio button. I wuld like to be able do select multiple objects from the same folder, which would be easy if the radio buttons were replaced with checkboxes. Can this be done?
3. The Enhanced Object Relation datatyp lets you specify checkboxes as a selection mechanism, and a folder location, but then you can't browse to another location. You can only select from one particular folder. How do you browse for objects in a folder tree with the Enhanced Object Relation datatype?
Sunday 12 March 2006 12:22:32 am
I found out how to do this by studying the comments in the ini files in /settings.
Two ini files control browsing and object selection behaviour:
browse.ini and content.ini
In browse.ini actions are defined for various browsing tasks.
In content.ini these browsing actions can be tied to class attributes. So you can control the browsing behaviour for every class attribute individually.
To customise the browsing behaviour for my admin site, I created browse.ini.append.php and content.ini.append.php files in /settings/siteaccess/admin.
In browse.ini.append.php, I defined additional browsing actions, like this one for selecting multiple images from the Images folder, using checkboxes:
[AddRelatedImages] StartNode=images SelectionType=multiple ReturnType=ObjectID
In the same browse.ini.append.php file, you can specify aliases for folder nodes, like in the above example for the Images folder:
AliasList[] AliasList[images]=51
In content.ini.append.php, you can then specify which class attributes use which browsing method. I specified the above defined browsing method for an attribute of type Object Relations, which stores relations to Image objects:
[ObjectRelationDataTypeSettings] ClassAttributeStartNode[] ClassAttributeStartNode[]=267;AddRelatedImages
267 is the attribute id of my attribute, and AddRelatedImages is the name of the action I defined above in browse.ini.append.php
The default browse action for a Object Relation attribute is AddRelatedObjectToDataType, which is defined in browse.ini as:
[AddRelatedObjectToDataType] StartNode=content SelectionType=single ReturnType=ObjectID
Similarly, the default action for a Object Relations attribute is:
[AddRelatedObjectListToDataType] StartNode=content SelectionType=multiple ReturnType=ObjectID
which is identical, except for the selection type (single vs.multiple ie radio buttons vs. checkboxes)
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