Perhaps I missed this or am doing something wrong, but I did a search and it seemed no one has mentioned this that I could find in the first couple pages of the forums search. But it seems like an obvious usability flaw.

You can "Add Existing Field" but you can't "Add Existing Fieldgroup".

For every content type I have to import each field individually, recreate the groups and assign all fields to the groups. Considering I have about 4 groups with 5 fields each in them. That's 20 fields I need to add, 4 groups, and changing designation on each field... Crap that's about 50 clicks and reloads per content type... I got about 25 content types... LOL

Why can't I, or where is the ability to "Add Existing Group". That would save recreating groups, and save adding fields one at a time. It would bring my clicks and reloads down to 4 or 5 per content type.

It seems obvious this ability would be included, so I'm assuming it's negligence on my part, or is this simply not possible with the current feature set.

Sorry for the lengthy post, trying to delay going back to the relentless task of adding fields one by one.

Comments

karens’s picture

karens commented
Status: Active » Postponed (maintainer needs more info)

Fieldgroups are specifically designed not to be shared, they are unique to a content type. Changing that would be quite a project.

But you are also talking about importing groups, which is a totally different thing. If you are importing from another setup that has fields and groups you should be able to import both the fields and the groups.

2ndChanceTech’s picture

2ndChanceTech commented

okay, so importing groups... can I import from another content type or only from another site setup?

Seems silly that I have to remake the groups and import each field singularly. I've been holding off on doing the rest of them till I figured this out...

First I had to make over 200 various views, now i have to do over 200 field imports... The views are done so I can't bitch about those anymore, but this import thing is rediculous.... ah well, might as well get it done if there's no straight forward way of doing it.

karens’s picture

karens commented

No, you can import a whole content type at once, including all its fields and groups. Export the whole thing from the other site, then import the whole thing.

2ndChanceTech’s picture

2ndChanceTech commented
Status: Postponed (maintainer needs more info) » Fixed

yeah I just figured that out, feel pretty dumb. I was expecting it to be more like the export for views, where it's useless for innersite import/export.

I'm switching this to fixed, as it gives the exact functionality needed, just not in an obvious place, and not with the simplicity of add existing field... but does EXACTLY what's needed.

karens’s picture

karens commented

True, it might be nice to have a more obvious link for that, but it would make a cluttered UI and it does work this way.

janwari’s picture

janwari commented

I too have come across situations where I wish I could just import an existing Fieldgroup into a new Content-Type.
Having the ability of import an existing Fieldgroups would be a powerful in terms of re-usability.

For example:
I have certain fields to store the contact information of a particular user. The fields could be Date of birth(integer), Name(textfield), Gender(textfield) etc. I have a Content-type called "English speakers" which contains these fields in a fieldgroup called "Contact Info".
Now two weeks later we decide to add another Content-type called "Arabic speakers", and we would want the exact same fields that there in the "Contact Info" fieldgroup of "English speakers" Content-type. And since CCK doesn't allow to add an fieldgroup I have to add those fields and then manually create the fieldgroup again.

Having the ability to add existing fieldgroups would allow us to create "components"(i.e group of elements) that can be reused in any Content-type.

2ndChanceTech’s picture

2ndChanceTech commented

As I mentioned above, this can be resolved by using the import/export feature of CCK (surprisingly)

What you want to do it, click export.

Choose Content Type to export (where the fieldgroup already is).
Choose fields and fieldgroup to export (Make sure you pick all fields needed under the fieldgroup, not just the fieldgroup).
Hit export and copy the code to clipboard or notepad

Go back to the main screen, and hit Import.

Choose your new content type in the drop down
paste your code in the box
hit import...

Voila, fields and fieldgroup in your new content type, just as if you hit "add existing fieldgroup".

Not as intuitive BUT it WILL solve the issue.

I just hit the back button after importing and change the content type over and over again to add them to other content types.

Anonymous’s picture

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

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