multiple bucket categories

This was going to go into MERCI Inventory, but the more we looked at it the less sense that made. The new plan is to create a taxonomy with MERCI and add that select list to the MERCI settings on each content type. That taxonomy won't show up as a accessory for that content type. This will also allow sites to add images to those terms and thus associate the image to the content type. merci_inventory will handle associating images to specific nodes.

I should be able to add this feature in the next week or so.

Keep the feature requests and bugs coming!

I like this idea. I know this isn't at all practical to implement, but would it make more sense for equipment types to be nodes rather than content types? That way, you could take advantage of an existing framework for taxonomy, build better views more easily (it's currently impossible to build a view of just all equipment types, AFAIK, without manually selecting them), and have general descriptions of and "landing pages" for equipment types.

Resources are nodes, but because of the way Buckets are structured we need something to define the nodes that are interchangeable. We use Content Types. We also leverage Taxonomy for Accessories. These may seem like odd uses of the core Drupal functionality, but it has allowed us to focus on the validation and UI aspects of MERCI.

In the current dev and release version, we are now creating the MERCI Equipment Grouping that shows up in the MERCI settings for each content type. I still need to do some more work to get that list to replace "Buckets" in the select list of available equipment users see.

I'm not that familiar with exposing that type of relationship in Views, but the plan is to do this in a way that allows you to create the equipment summary View you are asking for.

The patch is on updates. Clean installs set a merci_equipment_grouping_vid variable, but this still won't have an impact on the select list users see.

I've been rolling changes forward and back trying to fix some validation issues. Too many people were making too many changes too quickly in a attempt to get some closer to 'finished' into the packaged install profile.

I think I've fixed everything. Testing it now. Should commit and roll new released this morning.

Line 1038 in merci.module need to wrap the bucket items into their grouping for the list, but I'm not really sure how to do that.

// FIX - NEED TO CHANGE FORMATTING HERE
$options['options'][t('Buckets')] = $bucket_options;

While you're working in this very corner — I have only Resources and no Buckets (for others it might be the other way around). Maybe you've already accommodated this, but if you haven't: it would be nice to remove the "Resources" and "Buckets" categories completely for sites that have only one type of items, and offer just a flat list.

@kreynen - there is the problem that you can't nest optgroups, so you won't be able to have lists like the following:

Buckets
  Cameras
    Video camera
    Still camera
  Lights
    Big light
    Little light
Resources
...

Two thoughts:
1) Should end-users really care if an item is a bucket or a resource? If not can you just remove that distinction in the select list and just group things by... well, their group? :)
2) This might be indicative of deeper UI issues along the lines of what I've discussed in other threads - the fact that there's simply too much information to be contained in a single select list. You could have multiple select lists - the first is a list of groups, and once you select a group a second select list appears listing all buckets in that group

Users shouldn't care if something is a bucket or a resource. I added the configuration for grouping and made a note in the code were it needed to be implemented, but when looking at how to add the hierarchy if groups had been defined and using the current hierarchy made my head hurt.

At public access stations, many people only want to make a reservation when all of what they can get everything they want. This includes items form multiple groups. Making multiple passes through the groups and then potentially having to go back would be a real inconvenience for those users.

I've been trying to get this working on my list of gear, and believe I've done all the taxonomy and list terms correct, but instead of seeing

-------
Buckets
-Cameras
--HPX170
--DVX100
-Lights
--Big light
--Little light
Resources
--------

I'm instead seeing:

-------
Buckets
-Little light
-HPX170
-Big light
-DVX100
Resources
--------

Darrick added this, but it is only in the current dev snapshot.

Awesome! I installed the dev version, and a number of issues I was having went away.
Much appreciated!