Hi Vincent, Thanks for the feedback. See my comments below.
On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 7:15 PM, Vincent Massol <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Marius, > > Disclaimer: I really haven't had the time to think about this so my comments > below are based after thinking about it for 10 minutes only. IMO this > requires some more brainstorming/thinking. > > On Oct 3, 2011, at 5:33 PM, Marius Dumitru Florea wrote: > >> Hi devs, >> >> For the upcoming Application Within Minutes I need to enhance the >> XWiki platform with the ability to generate the page name >> automatically when creating a new wiki page. For some applications it >> doesn't make sense to have two creation steps: (1) specify the wiki >> page name (i.e. the location) and then (2) edit the new wiki page with >> the specified name. Let me give you two examples: >> >> * It would be cool to be able to create a new blog post in a single >> step. The blog post name could be generated from the blog post title >> specified in the edit form. >> >> * An application that manages holiday requests doesn't need meaningful >> page names (i.e. free text, like a blog post would have) but something >> like Request_XYZ, where XYZ is a unique counter/identifier. >> >> These applications should be able to create new wiki pages with >> automatically generated names without writing their custom create >> forms. >> >> Since 3.2RC1 was planed for today and these changes are in the 3.2 >> roadmap, here's a proposal that I think I can implement quickly and >> safely: >> >> (1) Introduce two new components: >> >> // Used to generate a document name that doesn't have to be unique >> (e.g. by cleaning the document title). >> DocumentReferenceGenerator#generate(DocumentModelBridge):DocumentReference >> >> // Used to make a document name unique (by suffixing an unique >> counter/identifier) >> DocumentReferenceDifferentiator#differentiate(DocumentReference):DocumentReference > > I don't see the need for 2 components. I do see the need for one component: The two components I proposed serve two different concerns: 1. Generate a document name from the structured and/or non-structured data of a document. The most simple implementation is to use the document title as the document name but IMO an XWiki application should be able to write its own generator (in groovy for instance). ---> Ludovic and devs writing XWiki applications should confirm if this is really needed. 2. Modify a document reference to make it unique. I believe XWiki applications have to be able to mix implementations of these components. > > DocumentReferenceGenerator#generate(String prefix) > > Then you could have one implementation of it that that takes the prefix and > appends a number to make it unique. > > Now for using the title as the reference name, we don't need anything: > new DocumentReference(wiki, space, doc.getTitle()); > >> (2) Modify editinline.vm to store "documentReferenceGenerator" and >> "documentReferenceDifferentiator" request parameters in two hidden >> input fields so that they are passed to the save action. Obviously, >> these are component hints. >> >> (3) Modify editactions.vm to replace "Save & View" + "Save & Continue" >> with "Create" when "documentReferenceGenerator" or >> "documentReferenceDifferentiator" (or both) request parameters are >> set. > > I don't see how what use case (3) solves. Can you explain? You go to the Blog home page and click the Create button which takes you to: /xwiki/bin/edit/Blog/TemporaryBlogPost253?template=Blog.BlogPostTemplate&parent=Blog.WebHome&documentReferenceGenerator=custom If we keep "Save & Continue" then it will be possible to create a new document everytime your click it because the factors that influence the generated document reference can change (e.g. you modify the title). We could keep only "Save & View" but I thought "Create" is better from UX point of view. > >> (4) Modify SaveAction to take into account these two request >> parameters (only if they are specified). Something along these lines: >> >> generateDocumentReference(doc) >> synchronize(lock) { >> doc.copyDocument(differentiate(generatedDocumentReference)).save(); >> } >> >> I'm not sure where to place the two components from (1) though. WDYT? > > The component I mentioned above could go in xwiki-platform-model. > > <general remarks> > Now I'm not very comfortable with hacking the default vm files to add more > "if" in the code to support even more parameters. > Why not use the new sheet system you've started putting in place to specify a > specific vm to use? > More generally I'd like that we think about removing big spaghettis code for > vm and be able to have more vms and that we can choose which vm to use where. The idea was to let XWiki applications use the standard edit/create form offered by the XWiki platform. I can drop (2) and let each application add those hidden input fields in their edit sheet if they need to generate the pane name automatically. Regarding (3), the reason I proposed to hide the Save buttons and show Create only when those specific request parameters are set is because I wanted to keep the current behavior for normal wiki pages and existing XWiki applications. My basic need is to distinguish between create and edit form. The simplest solution is to show the Create button instead of Save buttons when the document is new, but that's an important change (for instance lots of functional test will be affected) and I didn't want to make it in 3.2RC1. > > Also, as usual, I'd like to that someone who wants to build on the xwiki dev > platform be able to not use this if he doesn't need to (hence my comment > above about being able to selectively choose what behavior to have/use > instead of having lots of "if"s in vm files. Especially since this new > behavior doesn't seem to be good for the majority of use cases but only for > some. > > Said differently use an Object-oriented approach or a component-based > approach instead of a big-ball-of-mud approach ;) Well, that sounds nice, but Velocity templates are not object oriented and it's not easy for an XWiki application to reuse/customize an existing template without duplicating its code. Thanks, Marius > </general remarks> > > Note that as always, I'd prefer if we do this: > - discuss how we would like it to be in the near future > - then only discuss how to reach that based on constraints (release > contraint, etc) and see how many steps we need to get there > > Thanks > -Vincent > > _______________________________________________ > devs mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs > _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
