Hi! It's possible I missed something and maybe this is a support request rather than a feature one.

My specific need is a "list of participants" field for a sort of event content type. I would gladly use a multiple valued textfield, it would be the most simple way to handle it, but there are two heavy problems I encounter:

1. inputting multiple values is really uncomfortable, exspecially if there are lots of them: the form only gives three spaces more than the current number of values, so that in order to, say, add 20 participants to the event, one has to update and submit changes to the node seven times. I would need a better way to input theese values: more elegantly a form which replicates itself each time it's filled, but I would also settle for a text field where you can enter the values and separate them with endlines.

2. I would like theese multiple value to be sorted. I know I can get it at display time with content templates, so this issue is a little less important, though I'd still prefer values to be stored already sorted at creation/edit time.

Theese two would be nice to have in CCK. There is also a bit more complicated issue in my problem: the fact that alphabetical order should be applied to surnames, while display is just read better with names first... but this is something I would leave for later.

Comments

yched’s picture

yched commented

a form which replicates itself each time it's filled
It would be nice, but currently only doable on a 'field type per field type' basis, meaning, all field modules would have to implement this separately (and consistently) - will probably not happen.
This might be doable if / when we refactor multpile values management out of field modules and into content.module. Then maybe nifty ajax stuff like "add more values" link (or even "add 'x (user-selectable)' values") might be envisioned.

I'd still prefer values to be stored already sorted at creation/edit time
I think you currently need to do that in a custom and separated 'helper' module of your own, using _hook_nodeapi.
This is sort of related to the 'custom validation API' issue (see http://drupal.org/node/52051) - with the difference that you want to act on submit time instead of validation time.

karens’s picture

karens commented

Another way to do this is to create another content type for your participants, and link your participants to the event using the nodereference field. Then you use Views to create a list of participants for each event. This is the method I use and it works pretty well and doesn't required any custom coding, just maybe a little custom themeing.

yched’s picture

yched commented
Title: better multiple values handling: input and sorting » sorting multiple values

the "add new values" feature is discussed here : http://drupal.org/node/81197

Delete Me-1’s picture

Delete Me-1 commented

yched:
This might be doable if / when we refactor multpile values management out of field modules and into content.module. Then maybe nifty ajax stuff like "add more values" link (or even "add 'x (user-selectable)' values") might be envisioned.

I am willing to have a look at this. Have you talked about how you are going to do this yet?

catch’s picture

catch
he/him
Primary language English
commented
Status: Active » Fixed

Fixed in D6. w00t.

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented
Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for two weeks with no activity.