[xwiki-devs] [Brainstorming] Restrict parent page based on its type
Hi devs, I have an XWiki application that creates two types of pages. Let's call them Category and Procedure. The application has two template providers that allow the users to create Categories and Procedures anywhere on the wiki using the Create Page menu. I would like to restrict the creation like this: * You can create a new Category page either as a top level page or as a child of an existing Category page * You can create a new Procedure page only as a child of an existing Category or Procedure page Category -> ... Category -> Procedure -> ... -> Procedure One solution to achieve this is to add a new property to the template provider, e.g. "parentType", that specifies the type of pages (XClass references) that are allowed as parent. We would use a Database List with multiple selection and relational storage. We can use the empty string to represent "no parent" (i.e. top level page). An empty list would mean no parent type restriction. Category template provider: {parentType: ["CategoryClass", ""]} Procedure template provider: {parentType: ["CategoryClass", "ProcedureClass"]} Do you think this is useful? Do you see any problem with this solution? Is it worth implementing? Thanks, Marius
It looks interesting and quite powerful to structure content. 2016-11-29 10:23 GMT+01:00 Marius Dumitru Florea < mariusdumitru.florea@xwiki.com>:
Hi devs,
I have an XWiki application that creates two types of pages. Let's call them Category and Procedure. The application has two template providers that allow the users to create Categories and Procedures anywhere on the wiki using the Create Page menu. I would like to restrict the creation like this:
* You can create a new Category page either as a top level page or as a child of an existing Category page * You can create a new Procedure page only as a child of an existing Category or Procedure page
Category -> ... Category -> Procedure -> ... -> Procedure
One solution to achieve this is to add a new property to the template provider, e.g. "parentType", that specifies the type of pages (XClass references) that are allowed as parent. We would use a Database List with multiple selection and relational storage. We can use the empty string to represent "no parent" (i.e. top level page). An empty list would mean no parent type restriction.
Category template provider: {parentType: ["CategoryClass", ""]} Procedure template provider: {parentType: ["CategoryClass", "ProcedureClass"]}
Do you think this is useful? Do you see any problem with this solution? Is it worth implementing?
Thanks, Marius
-- Guillaume Delhumeau (guillaume.delhumeau@xwiki.com) Research & Development Engineer at XWiki SAS Committer on the XWiki.org project
On 29 Nov 2016, at 10:23, Marius Dumitru Florea <mariusdumitru.florea@xwiki.com> wrote:
Hi devs,
I have an XWiki application that creates two types of pages. Let's call them Category and Procedure. The application has two template providers that allow the users to create Categories and Procedures anywhere on the wiki using the Create Page menu. I would like to restrict the creation like this:
* You can create a new Category page either as a top level page or as a child of an existing Category page * You can create a new Procedure page only as a child of an existing Category or Procedure page
Category -> ... Category -> Procedure -> ... -> Procedure
One solution to achieve this is to add a new property to the template provider, e.g. "parentType", that specifies the type of pages (XClass references) that are allowed as parent. We would use a Database List with multiple selection and relational storage. We can use the empty string to represent "no parent" (i.e. top level page). An empty list would mean no parent type restriction.
Category template provider: {parentType: ["CategoryClass", ""]} Procedure template provider: {parentType: ["CategoryClass", "ProcedureClass"]}
Do you think this is useful? Do you see any problem with this solution? Is it worth implementing?
If you need it then it means there’s a need (even though possibly not a very common one). The only downside I see is the complexity it adds for the user. We may want to think about an Advanced section in the template provide UI screen and move advanced options there. Thanks -Vincent
Thanks, Marius
+1 This would obviously work only for non-terminal/nested pages. You might also want to think about handling excludes (i.e. all parent types *except* this and that), and probably the case when you have both includes and excludes. Also, the create UI (among others) would need to change a bit on the parent selector (once you select a template provider with such restrictions), probably by filtering the tree modal to show only pages of the restricted type. Thanks, Eduard On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 12:24 PM, Vincent Massol <vincent@massol.net> wrote:
On 29 Nov 2016, at 10:23, Marius Dumitru Florea < mariusdumitru.florea@xwiki.com> wrote:
Hi devs,
I have an XWiki application that creates two types of pages. Let's call them Category and Procedure. The application has two template providers that allow the users to create Categories and Procedures anywhere on the wiki using the Create Page menu. I would like to restrict the creation like this:
* You can create a new Category page either as a top level page or as a child of an existing Category page * You can create a new Procedure page only as a child of an existing Category or Procedure page
Category -> ... Category -> Procedure -> ... -> Procedure
One solution to achieve this is to add a new property to the template provider, e.g. "parentType", that specifies the type of pages (XClass references) that are allowed as parent. We would use a Database List with multiple selection and relational storage. We can use the empty string to represent "no parent" (i.e. top level page). An empty list would mean no parent type restriction.
Category template provider: {parentType: ["CategoryClass", ""]} Procedure template provider: {parentType: ["CategoryClass", "ProcedureClass"]}
Do you think this is useful? Do you see any problem with this solution? Is it worth implementing?
If you need it then it means there’s a need (even though possibly not a very common one). The only downside I see is the complexity it adds for the user. We may want to think about an Advanced section in the template provide UI screen and move advanced options there.
Thanks -Vincent
Thanks, Marius
+1 Thanks, Caty On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 12:44 PM, Eduard Moraru <enygma2002@gmail.com> wrote:
+1
This would obviously work only for non-terminal/nested pages.
You might also want to think about handling excludes (i.e. all parent types *except* this and that), and probably the case when you have both includes and excludes.
Also, the create UI (among others) would need to change a bit on the parent selector (once you select a template provider with such restrictions), probably by filtering the tree modal to show only pages of the restricted type.
Thanks, Eduard
On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 12:24 PM, Vincent Massol <vincent@massol.net> wrote:
On 29 Nov 2016, at 10:23, Marius Dumitru Florea < mariusdumitru.florea@xwiki.com> wrote:
Hi devs,
I have an XWiki application that creates two types of pages. Let's call them Category and Procedure. The application has two template providers that allow the users to create Categories and Procedures anywhere on
the
wiki using the Create Page menu. I would like to restrict the creation like this:
* You can create a new Category page either as a top level page or as a child of an existing Category page * You can create a new Procedure page only as a child of an existing Category or Procedure page
Category -> ... Category -> Procedure -> ... -> Procedure
One solution to achieve this is to add a new property to the template provider, e.g. "parentType", that specifies the type of pages (XClass references) that are allowed as parent. We would use a Database List with multiple selection and relational storage. We can use the empty string to represent "no parent" (i.e. top level page). An empty list would mean no parent type restriction.
Category template provider: {parentType: ["CategoryClass", ""]} Procedure template provider: {parentType: ["CategoryClass", "ProcedureClass"]}
Do you think this is useful? Do you see any problem with this solution? Is it worth implementing?
If you need it then it means there’s a need (even though possibly not a very common one). The only downside I see is the complexity it adds for the user. We may want to think about an Advanced section in the template provide UI screen and move advanced options there.
Thanks -Vincent
Thanks, Marius
Hello Marius, I think the topic of dynamic configuration of available templates is a very good topic. The only problem I see with the solution above is that it might cover only a subset of the dynamic templates that we might want to configure, and once we add this mechanism it will be harder to take it back to replace it with a more generic one. So it would interesting to make a collection of usecases for dynamic template configuration that we have, to see how many of them we can cover with the mechanism you proposed (you called the thread "Brainstorming" :) ) The usecases I had so far or that I can think of: * template should be available only in documents that have a specific name, under a grandparent in the tree which is typed (in my case, I had subtrees dedicated to departments, with an object to configure departments, and then, in the children of these departments a page always had the same name (say, "Ideas") and here the Idea template had to be available. This usecase can be reduced to your case, if we create a class for the Ideas homepage and restrict the ideas template to this class * template should be available under a parent but only first level. E.g. Ideas can be created, they are created as non-terminal because regular pages need to be linkable under, but an Idea should not be creatable under an Idea. This would need a different mechanism, what you proposed is not enough. This usecase can also be reduced to your usecase, provided that the parentType is about the direct parent (and not ancestor). * template should be available in a subtree (all descendants) of a page with a given type, not only as a direct child. * Edy mentioned in a mail blacklisting, I think I had that case too (having a page that is the exception to the general rule on the wiki, rather than the other way around) * preventing blank XWiki pages from being created in a subtree, only allowing a structured page (from a template) to be created in a given place in the tree (kind of like the "add new application entry" of AWM, but through the + button) Note that, for the first 2 cases, reducing them to your usecase would mean to create a class only for this, for binding the provider to it as a parent. This is not something that an App within minutes does, for example, although it covers the roughly the same usecase (non structured page is the parent of multiple structured pages). One of the ideas I had at some point was allowing a parent to configure the available templates under it, and not the other way around, but I don't have much more details about this (would they be preferences?, would it be an object?, etc). I would have to think more about this before giving a final answer, Anca On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 10:23 AM, Marius Dumitru Florea < mariusdumitru.florea@xwiki.com> wrote:
Hi devs,
I have an XWiki application that creates two types of pages. Let's call them Category and Procedure. The application has two template providers that allow the users to create Categories and Procedures anywhere on the wiki using the Create Page menu. I would like to restrict the creation like this:
* You can create a new Category page either as a top level page or as a child of an existing Category page * You can create a new Procedure page only as a child of an existing Category or Procedure page
Category -> ... Category -> Procedure -> ... -> Procedure
One solution to achieve this is to add a new property to the template provider, e.g. "parentType", that specifies the type of pages (XClass references) that are allowed as parent. We would use a Database List with multiple selection and relational storage. We can use the empty string to represent "no parent" (i.e. top level page). An empty list would mean no parent type restriction.
Category template provider: {parentType: ["CategoryClass", ""]} Procedure template provider: {parentType: ["CategoryClass", "ProcedureClass"]}
Do you think this is useful? Do you see any problem with this solution? Is it worth implementing?
Thanks, Marius
participants (6)
-
Anca Luca -
Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) -
Eduard Moraru -
Guillaume Delhumeau -
Marius Dumitru Florea -
Vincent Massol