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By f0ns on
Dear reader,
I have been on the darkest corners of the internet trying to find a solution for my problem. This will be my last resort before giving up hope! well that is maybe a bit too drastic but you get how helpless i am at the moment.
I have a question about using the taxonomy module, i'm using drupal to make a intranet site which is a "hanger" for company data. I have a content type Office, the different Office nodes contain all the offices of my company.
I made some extra content types:
- Switch
- UPS
- Telephone
- ...
All these content types and the content types that will be added in the future have a nodereference to one of the Office nodes I talked about in the beginning of my post.
My final goal is to make some kind of dashboard for every Office node that is in my database which contains all the info that is related (by using the nodereference).
So the final question is: Is there a way to use taxonomy on an automated way when entering different Switches, UPSes, Telephones (Using CCK) so the end user doesn't have to categorise.
I ask this because I want all the data that I have in my database to be accessible using the views module! If taxonomy ain't the way to roll here please tell me.. i'm open for anything!
All content types I use are made by using CCK
I tried to describe my problem in the best way I could, if you have any questions/remarks please don't hesitate!
Thanks alot!
Kind regards,
Fons
Comments
i'm not sure where taxonomy
i'm not sure where taxonomy is being used here. if i understand properly, your content looks like this:
office1
-switch1
-ups1
office2
-ups2
-phone2
If you are using node reference to link the items to the office, views should be able to handle this. create a Relationship in your view to link each item content type to the office content type. to make a pretty dashboard, you will either have to use the Views API and write some PHP to display all offices at once without it looking confusing in a single table. if you only need to see one office at a time, you can use an Argument in the view that is the node ID of the office. Does that help?
Thank you for the fast reply
Thank you for the fast reply narayanis.
I think you get the idea, an office has different content types that refer to it like switch and ups. So for instance:
Company 1:
- 13 switches
- 12 UPSes
- 100 phones
Company 2:
- 2 Switches
- 1 UPS
- 10 phones
- 1 Server
The basic Idea is that I can get the information I want from a company in no time. I had in mind to let a user select a Company first.. after selecting a company a dashboard has to be shown of that Company. I hope this is what you had in mind.. so if I get you right i'm thinking about taxonomy the wrong way here?
My basic idea is to make all information accessible in two ways:
- hierachical way using views and a dashboard or something like that
- using the search function
Thanks in advance for your help!
Some may disagree with me,
Some may disagree with me, but the idea for taxonomy is to provide metadata. A taxonomy term has no information on its own, but describes the node to which it is attached. "Switch 1" does not describe "Company 1" so it wouldn't be a taxonomy term; it is a complete piece of information that can stand on its own, but is also relevant to "Company".
You may be able to somewhat use the taxonomy fields to achieve the goal, but I think it may limit you greatly, while Views can be extended to cover most of your needs. It will let you create a dashboard per company, and you can also expose filters in Views, allowing the user to work with drop-downs or search fields to find the desired information.
I have looked into the
I have looked into the exposed filters narayanis, my only problem with them is that for the nodes I create it is only possible to use a textfield as filter (maybe i'm doing something wrong). This is absolutely not user friendly! I would need drop downs or maybe auto complete to give this some structure.
Thanks for helping me this far! I'm now making some Use Cases to documentate what my drupal site should be doing. Yes this is an internship assignment so I have to documentate everything well :). I'm reading 8 houres a day about drupal to get some ensight in what existing modules can do for me and what i'll have to make on my own in order to achieve my goal.
Thanks alot, I really appreciate the effort you put in answering the difficult questions of a stranger.
Only text eh? what kinds of
Only text eh? what kinds of fields are you exposing for the search? there are a few modules that improve upon the standard exposed filters, but you may not even need them. maybe post a screenshot of what it looks like and what you'd like it to look like.
The problem is I don't have a
The problem is I don't have a working site running atm. I made a test web-site in drupal to show the possibilities of drupal to the the company where I do my internship. I have tested around with the exposed filter at that time and didn't get any decent structure out of it.
I was thinking on having 2 drop downs next to eachother:
Page layout:
---------------------------------------------------
-- Select a company -- and -- Select a type --
** View based on drop downs above **
---------------------------------------------------
This is the idea i have in my head to make the data in my database easy accessible, obtaining data within a few clicks is essential that is why I want to use the 2 dropdowns. When you select a company you get get all the different node types that have a nodereference to this company.
Example:
When I choose Company X in Drop Down 1 I get the options Switches, UPS, Airco in the 2nd dropdown. When I choose one of these in the 2nd drop down I get a table with the views which shows all the nodes of that type for that company.
I hope you understand what I mean.
I can't thank you enough for the well constructed feedback you give on my questions. I'm new to drupal but really digging in to it at the moment. I really hope I can give something back to the community over time once I get a hang of it.
Once again a big thank you!
best regards,
Fons
I'm getting a clearer picture
I'm getting a clearer picture now, and am going to contradict myself a bit. Company should be a content type. Switch/UPS/etc could be EITHER a series of unique content types OR a single content type called Hardware. To determine which way to go, think about what you need to do with the data later on. Do all pieces of Hardware have the same fields (serial number, date purchased, etc)? Are there now (or will there be future) needs that are unique to each hardware category?
If the first, you can use taxonomy to describe the hardware category and just have a single content type called Hardware. If the second, each hardware category should be its own content type.
In either case, you can do the dual drop-down thing with Views. The second drop-down would be either a Content Type filter or a Taxonomy filter, depending on which way you choose to go.
I'm pretty sure that every
I'm pretty sure that every kind of hardware will need its own content type. I've made up an ERD and it clearly shows all of the types have different specifications. Changing around fields (adding, modifying) is also very important here.
Thanks alot for your feedback.. I think i'll have to give the exposed filters a try again this afternoon in a test setup.
2 questions arise:
- How do I make a dropbox that contains all the Company titles (=> Company nodes Title(textfield)).
- How do I make a dropbox that contains all different node types (=> Node Title(textfield)) (exclude company type here and maybe some other types in the future).
Thanks again!!!
1. you'll need to create a
1. you'll need to create a small custom module to do node titles as a dropdown instead of a text box. See http://drupal.org/node/463990#comment-2323048 for some inspiration that should require very little tweaking.
2. add a filter of Content Type and expose it. Select the types you want the user to see if needed and use the checkbox called "Limit to Selected Items" (or something like that).
okay! my company has gave me
okay! my company has gave me another task (building a sandwich ordering system in Drupal) so this project is going on hold for 2-3 days! thanks for the information that is truly helpfull! I'll get back to you!
Thanks alot!