Standardized "Custom Field Definitions"

Talk about new features for CMSMS and modules.
Post Reply
Wishbone
Power Poster
Power Poster
Posts: 1369
Joined: Tue Dec 23, 2008 8:39 pm

Standardized "Custom Field Definitions"

Post by Wishbone »

One of the things that makes CMSMS extremely awesome is the large amount of configurability due to Custom or Extra Field Definitions. Something that would make CMSMS infinitely awesome would be to have a full-blown core feature or module that would standardize custom fields and allow users to extend them.

Some modules, like AdvancedContent allow 'default values' to checkboxes and multi-selects. Some allow checkboxes, but can't default it to 'yes'. Most don't have multi-selects at all.

What would be nice would be an all-out module that exposes a consistent interface to the user (through an API for the module that the user is using), the ability to have pre-set values for all fields, either hard-coded at the time of the summary template creation, or through a UDT that queries for values to present to the user to choose from.

If the field type doesn't exist, then there should be some way for the user to create their own field, through a template for this purpose. I would love to substitute the "Image Upload" field (that only some modules have, btw) with GBFilePicker, but can't because of the limited choices.

Real world example: I'm working on a website for my daughter's preschool.. Gallery, CGBlog, CGFeedback, FEU, CustomContent, the works... When uploading photo galleries to the 'parents only' section, it would be nice if the teacher could tag the kids in the photos so that the parents can recieve a notice in their weekly newsletter that there are new photos of their kids. The 'Gallery' module is extremely awesome. What would make it infinitely awesome would be to add a multiselect field (not available) where the preset values would be set to {CGUserDirectory category=kids summarytemplate=gallery_tag} This summary template of CGUserDirectory would just list out names of the kids for the multi-select field for tagging.

Key word: Infinitely awesome.

I'm currently unpublished. I have some custom modules that I've created for one-off purposes.. I'm working on my first module for public consumption, and have an idea for several others.. I'm thinking about creating a module called CustomFieldDefinitions, which would be a pre-req for other modules. This won't help existing modules, but it would be nice if something like this would be available for 2.0 as core functionality where many modules might have to be re-written anyways.

Thanks for listening to my rant. :)
Post Reply

Return to “Feature ideas”