Ordering attributes within a node: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 15:21, 16 March 2011

ATK Howto: Ordering attributes within a node

Complexity: Basic
Author: Ivo Jansch <ivo@achievo.org>

Ordering attributes within a node

If you have an atkNode, attributes (i.e. database columns) appear in the order in which they are added via atkNode::add().

If you have an atkMetaNode (or derived class), fields appear in the order in which they appear in the database. To control the order in which attributes appear within a node (i.e. on a "page"), use atkMetaPolicy::setOrder(), atkMetaPolicy::setIncludes() or the $order argument to either atkMetaNode::add() or atkMetaPolicy::add(). If you don't have access to an atkMetaPolicy, use atkMetaNode::setAttributeOrder().

Examples

With atkMetaPolicy:

public static function meta(atkMetaPolicy $policy) 
{
  $policy->add("invoice_start_date", "atkDateAttribute");
  $policy->add("invoice_end_date", "atkDateAttribute");

  $policy->setOrder(array(
    "invoice_start_date",
    "invoice_end_date"
  ));
}

Using atkMetaAttributeModifier attribute modifiers:

public static function meta(atkMetaPolicy $policy) 
{
  // Make sure that field1 appears after field 2
  $policy->get("field1")->insertAfter("field2");

  // Make sure the remark field appears at the bottom.
  $policy->get("remark")->insertAtBottom();
}

See the [http://www.atk-framework.com/docs/atk/trunk/atk/meta/atkMetaAttributeModifier.html atkMetaAttributeModifier] API docs for more possibilities on reordering.

Independently ordering attributes on the "admin" and "view" pages

If you want your attributes to appear in one order in the "admin" (list) page, and in another in the "view" (detail) page, you can do something like the following to ensure that the "name" attribute will appear before the "email" attribute of "view" pages:

  public function action_view($handler) {
    $this->setAttributeOrder("name", 10);
    $this->setAttributeOrder("email", 20);
    $this->attribSort();
    $handler->action_view($handler);
  }

(Note that where they will appear in relation to the other attributes is dependent on the "order" value of the other attributes.)

@@ Line 12: / Line 12: @@
 <syntaxhighlight lang="php">
-public static function meta(atkMetaPolicy $policy) {
+public static function meta(atkMetaPolicy $policy)
+{
    $policy->add("invoice_start_date", "atkDateAttribute");
    $policy->add("invoice_end_date", "atkDateAttribute");
@@ Line 23: / Line 24: @@
 </syntaxhighlight>
-With <tt>atkMetaNode</tt>:
+Using <tt>[[atkMetaAttributeModifier]]</tt> attribute modifiers:
 <syntaxhighlight lang="php">
-public function preAddToEditArray(&$record, $mode) {
+public static function meta(atkMetaPolicy $policy)
-   $order = array("description", "supplier_id", "amount", "delivery_date", "selling_price");
+{
+  // Make sure that field1 appears after field 2
-   foreach ($order as $k => $v) {
+   $policy->get("field1")->insertAfter("field2");
-    $this->setAttributeOrder($v, ($k + 1) * 100);
-  }
+   // Make sure the remark field appears at the bottom.
+  $policy->get("remark")->insertAtBottom();
 }
+See the [http://www.atk-framework.com/docs/atk/trunk/atk/meta/atkMetaAttributeModifier.html atkMetaAttributeModifier] API docs for more possibilities on reordering.
 </syntaxhighlight>
-(In the case of <tt>atkMetaNodes</tt>, the order in which attributes are added has no effect because they configure themselves [[Using the atkMetaNode|via database metadata]], and attributes are added to nodes before both the settings from <tt>atkMetaNode::meta()</tt> are applied, and the <tt>atkMetaNode::postMeta()</tt> method is run--"adding" an attribute via either of these methods <em>reconfigures</em> an existing attribute.  Attributes <em>will</em> appear in the order in which they are added in a constructor, but this is discouraged.)
 === Independently ordering attributes on the "admin" and "view" pages ===