I thought I had brought up this wish / subject for discussion already,
but can't seem to find it now, so perhaps I didn't. Either way, more
ideas have come up since then, so whichever the case:
U(se)C(ase)1) I often encounter use cases where I want to render URL
type properties as a link, pointing to the URL, but titled something
else, typically a different property of the item. In other words,
generating links not laid out as <a ex:href-content=".url"
ex:content=".url"></a>, but with different exhibit expressions for the
title/content, and the href attribute. This is presently easy to do in
lense templates, but impossible in, perhaps most notably, 1a):
TabularView columns.
UC2) Conversely, I often have titles which I would want linked to some
URL property, when set, or just presented as text, when not available.
(This is presently not even possible to achieve with lense templates.)
I mean to find (and implement) solutions to both issues, and I find
them at least in part related, especially in 1a) the TabularView
column case, which I aim to address first. My angle on that is thus:
how would we want to declare that behaviour in our markup?
Two different answers to 1a) have come up so far, both able to achieve
the same effect, but different in scope. It's not an either/or
solution; both could be useful in their own right, independently or in
concert.
Let's assume a context of wanting to set up a meta exhibit of
exhibits, where we want to link to exhibits by page title rather than
by page URL. (If you don't wan a meta exhibit like that, feel free to
assume some other example instead; it's just an example, after all.)
I'm naming/numbering the solutions below by what use cases above they
address.
S(olution)1:1) Allow configuring link titles at the property type
level, throughout the entire exhibit (or at least where Exhibit
renders the links to that particular valueType:"url" property). In
Exhibit JSON terms, this could look like:
{ properties:{ pageURL: { valueType:"url", linkTitle:".title" } }
S1a:2) Invent an exhibit expression function for links, which takes
two expression parameters: an url (expression), and a title
(expression). An ex:column setup using this could look like:
ex:columns=".number, link(.pageURL, .title), .creationDate"
Thoughts and inputs on anything covered above appreciated. I might not
listen much to arguments along the lines of "don't want this", but if
you feel that Exhibit should remain incapable of the above I would
prefer input on how or where I should instead intercept page
rendering, so I could achieve effects like UC1a in my own exhibits.
--
/ Johan Sundström, http://ecmanaut.blogspot.com/
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