Question

I showed one of my users the form system today. He was pretty enthusiastic about using it as a database until he realised that there was no way - during edit - to navigate between record of the same type in a dataset.

Has any one thought about this and/or got a solution?

Thanks, M.

Environment

-- MartinCleaver - 07 Nov 2003

Answer

Not sure what you mean by navigating between records,

1. View previous and next record?
2. Edit a set of records at once?

1. View previous and next record

We did that at work for one application. The records (topic names) are of form MyMonthlyToDo2003x10, MyMonthlyToDo2003x11. You can do a SpreadSheetPlugin CALC to evaluate the previous and next topic name, then show the links accordingly.

2. Edit a set of records at once

This sounds like a new Plugin. See EditSetOfTWikiFormRecordsAtOnce brainstorming idea.

-- PeterThoeny - 08 Nov 2003

Thanks Peter.

1. Can't work for me as I have records with meaningful names such as HummingbirdKmSystem, LegatoKmSystem, OsellusKmSystem, 80/20KmSystem, IntelliseekKmSystem, TheBrainKmSystem, AutonomyKmSystem and TacitKmSystem

I wonder whether the NavPlugin is the place to start.

-- MartinCleaver - 08 Nov 2003

We had the same request here at work: Some people had a "database" of records beings tasks to do, with fields such as "module" and "status". they wanted a quick way to have a list of "similar" records (i.e., records with same "module" and "status" fields). What we did was:

Each task is a standalone wiki topic, with a set of form fields defined in the TaskFormFields topic, which is added to the default template for new forms, TaskFormTemplate.

The system presents summary views of the tasks as tables by performing searches on the topics, with the %SEARCH{...}% wiki construct (see TWikiVariables and FormattedSearch). The Tasks are mainly sorted by 2 form fields: Module and Status.

There is only one search, in the topic ListOfSimilarTasks, which can accept URL parameters (var %URLPARAM%) module and status to perform the relevant searches.

List Of Similar Tasks link

Once on a task, you can see all the tasks with the same Module and Status attributes. This is done by the following trick:

The %LIST% macro is an HTML A link to the page ListOfSimilarTasksRedirector, with an URL parameter page of the current page name. (appends ?page=%TOPIC% to URL).

ListOfSimilarTasksRedirector does a formatted search of only the page parameter to output a javascript statement ( window.location.replace(\"ListOfSimilarTasks?module=$formfield(Module)&status=$formfield(Status)\") ) to redirect towards ListOfSimilarTasks, with the URL parameters module and status extracted by the search on the page, via the %URLPARAM{param}% construct.

ListOfSimilarTasks does a %SEARCH{...}% on all the pages having the form files Module and Status of the passed values. It also sets a link to TasksBookView (with printabe skin), with the same parameters, which will do the same operation, but expansing the text

I have set my TODO list for the KoalaSkin in this fashion on http://koala.ilog.fr/wiki/bin/view/Koalaskin_tasklist/WebHome, feel free to play (you can add dummy tasks there, just label them with "Nobody" in charge so I can ignore them).

-- ColasNahaboo - 14 Nov 2003