My new approach would be a new way to type "Parent entries" in node form:
[nid]: [title], [nid]: [title], etc...

(Title can be left out, if you know the node id.)

eg: (with node id: 132,133,134)

Parent entries:
132: foo1, 133, 134:foo2

Also, it would work with autocomplete, when you start typing 'foo' scrolldown appear like: "132: foo1 (by admin)"

This could resolve problem, if two nodes has same title.

If you like the idea, i can make a patch.

Comments

Bèr Kessels’s picture

Bèr Kessels commented

This is too technical IMO. and thus a bit scary for Joe Schmoe. Joe Schmoe, should never, ever, have to worry about nodes, or ids, let alone have to use them.

I would say, rather:
My New E_
fills out as
My New Entry by John on December 12th 2005 (id 245)
My New Entry by JaneMaster on October 2nd 2005 (id 17)

But what we really need, is a nice node selector. :)

sami_k’s picture

sami_k commented

I am with Ber on this one... I can't see anyone other than maybe the admin wanting to enter data this way... Also I was thinking that if we limit clipper to allow a user to clip nodes to his/her own nodes than we could technically have a drop down if the number of nodes that a user is expecting is not gonig to be too large, this is what I intend for one of my sites... But back to the topic, what happened to the original purposal, is that too hard a patch to code up?

keve’s picture

keve commented

With autocomplete, i could not think of a good solution to make original approach.

Before, with dropdown lists it was possible to do. That in the list you saw node title, but the saved value was the node id. I used dynamic dropdown list with filtering. (you start typing in a 'filter' field then it filters the dropdown list). But this is the old way. In this case i needed to output all 'node titles' into the form, and consequently it was too big.

With autocomplete, i can do that you can see in the dropdown the 'node titles', but it prints the 'node id' into the text field. But then user cannot see the node title in the field only node id. It is not user-friendly at all.

At the moment i cannot think of a good solution. Any idea?

sami_k’s picture

sami_k commented

I am thinking why do we need an autocomplete form if it's a childof. I am thinking to do away completely with the field or have it uneditable if it's a child relationship...? as for adding a new node it may make sense... but i don't see the need if you've indicated that you want to add a child to a certain node.

keve’s picture

keve commented

You are right, i use it with 'childof' link from parent page, always.

But watch out, a child can have more than 1 parents. How do you add more parents to a child?
I think the module should be able to handle N:M relations to be flexible.

Another case, how would you remove a parent-child relation?

Bèr Kessels’s picture

Bèr Kessels commented

The reason why on add-child we still show that same field is three-fold.

* We can and need to add more then one child.
* We cannot kno)w what people will see on an re-edit of a node that was added trough add-child.
* Transparancy: one interface to rule them all. Consistancy ++

sami_k’s picture

sami_k commented
Title: New approach for 'parent entries': based on 'nid' » Auto-complete Parent for Clipper

* We can and need to add more then one child.
* I guess what we're getting at is that when we add a child, we may define more than one parent for that child?
* We cannot kno)w what people will see on an re-edit of a node that was added trough add-child.
* So if we take a two parents and they add the same node as a child, then on edit we will see both the parents?
* Transparancy: one interface to rule them all. Consistancy ++
* Can't argue with that...

Okay so down the line of keeping the autocomplete, when we do an autocomplete on that field do we get an nid for the matching field via the autocomplete... if so how can I get at that nid? I would like to patch it according to the earlier suggestions and I think we should work towards that angle then. I would like to see a robust clipper module.

sami_k’s picture

sami_k commented

in accordance with what Ber is saying above... what if the node id was appended to the title, node->clipper_parent... so "title [nid]" and the nid was actually used when inserting into node relations...? that sounds doable... any thoughts? i think if this module is to be any real use it must be able to attach properly to different nodes with the same name, right now it will append it to the first node with the name, just tested that...

Bèr Kessels’s picture

Bèr Kessels commented

appending the nid does not degrade, nor is it very user-friendly.
Think about users w/o Javascript.

keve’s picture

keve commented

I like it.

sami_k’s picture

sami_k commented

Well... say that it does degrade, that there is no js.. So, there is no autocomplete and users must enter the title by hand and they must enter the entire title... Well, no problem in that case because we can check for the nid and if none is found we'll simply pull up the node using the title as it is doing right now... any objects still? we could even make it either/or... so you could enter the title or just enter an nid in brackets...