Well it's been two months since I started this thread: http://drupal.org/node/124596
and we're no closer, as a Drupal community, to a solution.
In that one thread alone, I've gotten excited by at least 5 different semi-solutions, only to hit brick wall after brick wall. I've seen video tutorials posted by people who then wanted $200 to hear how it's done via skype. I've had people offer to post the solution "in a few days due to the kindness of an anonymous individual" only to have the guy disappear into the mist for evermore. I've seen more than one static page without any type of submit button or way of connecting the information to a database.
I've heard people mention both DependantDropdowns and ActiveSelect modules but neither seems to do what it says on the tin. DD in particular is a classic case of a module that was thrown together and the author hasn't been heard of since...c.10 months ago if memory serves me correct. Buggy as hell, full of holes and not a syllable of guidance about how the thing should be used. Definitely a candidate for Drupal 6 core!!
I'm beginning to think this is now a huge conspiracy on the scale of the moon landings and JFK. You know, if you play Neil Armstrong's famous words on stepping onto the lunar surface, backwards, you can hear him say "don't tell them about dependent dropdowns".
I've seen dependent dropdowns work a million times on the non-Drupal web world. I don't think I'm asking too much. I use nodeprofile with CCK on my site and it shouldn't be therefore too tough to plug in a new field which connects to location_city, location_country and location_state db tables. User picks country, then state, then city. I had also wanted to use DD's on taxonomy but I fear that is a bridge too far.
I personally think the best solution is for someone to rewrite the DependantDropdown module (and correct the spelling too!) as that at least is some way along the road towards success. I do believe if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. I am not a coder - I'm a user. I can hack my way through scripts and am good at html/css stuff, but I am willing to put my money where my mouth is. If someone gets DependantDropdowns module working in a way that allows them from any CCK field and taking the dropdown data from db tables and then allowing that data to be submitted, there's $150 on the table. If anyone else wants to chip in, feel free.
Let's put this problem to bed once and for all because it's driven me nuts for long enough. If you think you have a solution, show me what I've asked for, not some halfway solution: DD's working in a profile or registration form with a submit button where the info is then saved in a user table for future use.
Comments
I feel your pain
Have you tried posting this to the consulting list? You might get more help over there.
I think a grading system for modules would be very useful for general users, giving some kind of rating for quality of code, usability and documentation. You kind of expect a module to be partially functioning if it's available for download from the modules page.
Mark
I was hoping that module is
I was hoping that module is complete enough for it to be got to work by someone.
What do you mean by the consulting list? The paid development forum?
email lists
Not on the forums - on the email lists...
http://drupal.org/mailing-lists
If you subscribe and post to the consulting list you might get a better response. I find that forum posts go missing if they don't get answered straight away (hence your multiple posts :)
There is also the development list, but that is for core development and for module developers looking for coding help (not users looking for help).
Another approach would be to
Another approach would be to look for a more focused solution... What I mean is that I think (correct me if i'm wrong) you are looking for a solution to deal with a location selection problem, so why not try to get this feature implemented directly into the location module... There is a post http://drupal.org/node/93655 that i've been following that suggest exactly this.
I for one would love to have the ability to choose to use a dependent dropdown/active select widget for location selection if you were dealing with anything below country level (eg to select country -> states/provinces or country -> states/province->cities/post code)
noah, the reason I was
noah, the reason I was pursuing the existing DD module was that I'd quite like to use DD's on other things not directly related to location although it'd be great if Location module began to use DD's. From memory, I installed Location a month or two back and it just seemed like overkill for what I was after. Thanks for the suggestion.
Tried location
I tried location module a couple of days ago (5.x) and it looked ugly, to begin with. The form needed themeing to look all right.
Dependent dropdowns for taxonomy: conditional vocabularies
That's what I have ready in a module. It's working flawlessly so far, on both PHP4 and PHP5. Contact me through my contact page and I'll send it to you, so you can see if that's what you need. And if it is what you need, I wouldn't mind receiving your bounty, since it didn't build it overnight, it wasn't easy.
I also may be "the guy disappear into the mist for evermore", but I never got an e-mail from you through my contact page, so I'm not sure.
dependent dropdown module for 4.7 ?
I was wondering if you got the old dependent dropdown module to work or is it a completely new one. And does it work for 4.7 ? I am interesting in trying out your module, but sorry, I am completely broke (being a student). So, I can't pay for this at this time.
Thanks,
Arindam (arindam.ghatak@gmail.com)
D5, taxonomy only
It's completely new and works only for taxonomy.
Some Solutions
I have faced the same, or similar problems as those listed on this page, so far in two ways. I agree that it would be nice to have an all singing, all dancing drop-down thing, but I fail to see how it's going to be easy to use, so I have constructed a couple of modules that solve my problems, and I suspect they may help other people. They may at least be a good place to start.
The two problems I have faced are these:
1. Having a number of products, each product is a cck node, each tagged with a term from a vocabulary. I wanted a CCK field that I could use to point to one of the products, but I want a "pre-selector" so that I can select what sort of product, then I want to select the actual product from a (hopefully much reduced) list.
2. In France, the post codes cover a number of towns, I want to type in the post code, and get a list of the towns. In this case, the database is quite large!
So, to solve these problems, I've built Taxonomy Search Module, and the Fixed Data Dropdown module.
I hope you all find them helpful, and feel free to send me your $'s if you feel morally obliged to do so!
(I'm cross posting this on node 124596, 134630 and 142589 as the same issues seem to be raised)
hierarchical select
The module of Wim Leers is great:
http://drupal.org/project/hierarchical_select
demo here:
http://wimleers.com/demo/hierarchical-select
KOBA - Webdesign with Drupal
KOBA - Drupal Webdesign & Webdevelopment
two problems I see with this
two problems I see with this module:
1. Everything gets pre-loaded in a page. If you have 10,000 towns in a location taxonomy, that's going to hurt. If you have 100k (as I have), your site will grind to a halt.
2. You need to create these terms from within Taxonomy...ie. one at a time. If you have any more than a hundred or so of any taxonomy type, that will hurt as much as number 1.
Not true.
1. Only the initial "path" is pre-loaded. Not everything, and definitely not every possible combination.
2. Taxonomy is just *one* implementation. Remember: this is a form element, and each implementation will need a rendering function. The reason for the existence of this rendering function is that your hierarchy might require a variable number of parameters, in the case of taxonomy only one: the vocabulary id (vid). There's *always* *one* identifier for each "item" in the hierarchy, which is the term id (tid) in the case of taxonomy.
My point being: if you've got something else than taxonomy.module, you can perfectly support this using the Hierarchical Select module.
And if you're complaining about the pain of entering hundreds of terms manually through form fillin', you can always import them directly into the DB.
Import terms
I recently had to create a taxonomy vocabulary with 30 root terms and more than 300 child terms. I used http://drupal.org/project/taxonomy_csv to import the terms and hierarchy from an excel file. Works just fine (although it doesn't support characters like «é», «ã» or «ç»). I guess this could solve your problem number 2...
will this work in the
will this work in the content creation screen.
what i hate is when i have dependent terms and i have to see
Term
-term 2
-term 3
-term 4
Term 5
-term6
in every dropdown
That's one of the supported
That's one of the supported use cases, yes. See http://wimleers.com/demo/hierarchical-select for a demo.
This is great, and works
This is great, and works well (I added it to my site). Kudos Wim Leers! But I've got 2 questions:
1. Can I select multiple terms with this (eg, culture --> theater --> comedy AND drama)?
2. Does it allow for free tagging a child term if it's not on the list?