[Mitch]

Hey Steve,

So having run out of fields using ‘Country’ and ‘Department’ as ‘Custom Fields’ (I also tried Dates, but couldn’t get it to work – hacky workaround, I know) :) I’m back to inquiring about the Custom Fields feature. Is it on a roadmap? If so, is there a timeframe? Will it be an add-on?

Thanks!

[Mike]

I’ve hired two separate freelancers to try and accomplish this for me through hackery. I have one guy working on an ajax solution now and he’s reasonably close but I am beginning to lose faith. Custom fields would elevate this plugin enormously.

[Steven Zahm]

@ Mitch

Custom fields are definitely still on the roadmap. Time frame is hard to pin down but 0.7.9 finally has me to the point in all the code restructuring where things like this are relatively easily added.

@ Mike

With the release of 0.7.9, this should be somewhat easy for your freelancers to do. actually they should do it with very little editing to the Connections core at all and if they are very clever in the implementation I belie it could be pulled off by creating and extension plugin for Connections. Matter of fact, that is exactly how I’m going to do it. Changes to the core to make this more efficient would is to add hooks so plugins can manipulate the core query to include metadata and a few other things that’ll be part of the version .8

[Steven Zahm]

Ok, I spent this gorgeous Sunday afternoon creating a custom metabox and field API for Connections. The framework is very solid; even though it doesn’t actually save/retrieve the custom data just yet.

I am looking for input; so if you could install the alpha release of Connections and the Connections Metabox and Field Demo plugins and provide some, that would be terrific! You could install this on a production site as the only real change to the Connections core is including the PHP file that contains the new API and initialize it. It also couple CSS tweaks for the fields related to the custom fields. The demo plugin nothing but register new meta boxes and fields.

The second plugin is just a demo plugin that adds 4 custom meta boxes with over a dozen different custom fields to the bottom the the add/edit entry admin pages using the new API.

Link to the Connections version 0.8-alpha.1 plugin.
Link to the Connections Custom Fields and Metaboxes Demo plugin.

What’s left to do?

• Add another, almost, dozen field type to the API.
• Write an API for saving/retrieving the custom data.
• Document the demo plugin and upload it to GitHub.
• Figure out how this interfaces with the template API.

What’s the future hold for this?

• There will be a separate Extension Connections to add/managing custom metabox and fields. Will this be free or paid? Undecided. I would actually prefer free, but this will increase support.
• The API is designed from the ground up to be extensible on its own. What this means; I’ll be able to create extension custom fields for things like galleries; sliders maps and more. Cool, yes?

[Mitch]

At least you had a gorgeous Sunday, although the 3/4 inch of rain we had makes for an easier work day. :)

So, I’m not as smart as I come across sometimes. LOL. I updated to 0.7.9.1 and it seemed to override the above alpha version? When I had loaded 0.8 it still said .7.9 (which I know is normal) but then .7.9.1 overrode 0.8?

Regardless, even when I had .8 working, I have to admit I couldn’t figure out what I do with the new meta boxes. Sorry. :( Do you have any quick tut on it? Something so I can help test? I can’t tell how it affects layout/display, where they would show in cmap, etc..

It looks like it will be a fantastic addition to an already great plugin, I just couldn’t get my arms around the initial usage structure.

Any guidance? Thanks.

[Steven Zahm]

@ Mitch

Right, 0.8 is where I branched off to develop this API. The version will bump when I merge this feature branch into the main dev branch. Software Version Control mumbo jumbo…

Any way…

Installing it and the demo plugin, at this point, only shows [eye candy] the “officially” supported custom fields the API can create. There isn’t actually a way to save the fields [working on it, more below] or show them in a template yet. Actually not sure how I’ll even show the data in a template yet. I’m guessing I’ll just dump the custom fields if they exists after the core fields. Any finer control would require making PHP changes to the template. I’m thinking this would be a great fit for Connections qT…

I started working the meta API. Thats the how the data for the custom fields will be saved and retrieved at the code level, nothing a user will have to worry about. I thought a good tactic would be to mimic the way WP does it … boy, was that a rabbit hole I shouldn’t have gone down. Wasted 6/7 hours. I should’ve just gone ahead and done what I was going to do as I’d have a good chunk of it down by now.

[PG]

Just started using Connections and would love to see this implemented as I would like to add music-related fields. Looking forward to your solution!

[Steven Zahm]

@ PG

It’s coming along very nicely. The APIs I’m building into Connections to support this is already infinitely extensible; no exaggerating.

I’d say I’m about half done and the APIs will be in the next release; 0.8. Keep in mind this will still require a bit a PHP coding to add a custom field and then display it in the template. I haven’t quite worked out the user interface stuff or how it’ll be packaged. At the very least when 0.8 drops, I’ll post a howto on how to add custom fields by dropping some code in the theme’s functions.php file and how to edit the templates to show the custom fields that were added.

Currently, there is built in support for about a dozen different fields types and I will be adding another dozen, roughly. This will just be the core fields, a dev could add extend the API to support any type of field imaginable…

So, when you say music related fields, what would those be? Could you describe what those fields would be and what you would enter?

[PG]

Sure. Sorry for the long post.

Background – I manage a site for a traditional jazz band. It is made up of area high school students. The band is in their fourth year of existence and the alumni list is starting to get long, so I have chosen your plugin to help me manage not only the alumni but the current members as well.

The band is a standard trad jazz setup with a front line and rhythm section, so 9 instruments (including vocals).

Currently I am using the Title field for their primary instrument and the Organization field for the school they attend. I would like to make those Instrument and School. School is self-explanatory, yes? I can probably list the instruments as categories, but getting just current members’ primary instrument listed on the site with their name and school is why I want a field for that. I can use categories to list the other instruments they played while in the band.

A date field that allows me to create start and end dates for each member would be helpful as well. How I would use it follows below.

As the alumni list grows, I plan to eliminate the current db dump for a page that uses text fields, lists, image links, or some combination of that to search the db. A date field in the db that covers each members time with the band would really help with results. Every year there are members leaving and joining. Searching during a particular time frame will be a common occurrance, as I don’t anticipate members looking for someone more than three years earlier than they were in the band – they would have been in elementary school during those years. They also won’t search more than a year or two after they leave the band because in most cases, the bands’ average turnover rate will eliminate anyone they would know. Searching by time frame will also help the director and the band sponsors when they search for info.

There is also a need for tracking the festivals attended, awards won, and scholarships earned for each member. Since not all of those are going to be the same, fields would be a great way of keeping track of, and searching, that info.

I hope that helps.

[Steven Zahm]

@ PG

Thanks for the excellent description. It is very helpful to have a real word use cases.

I just started work on adding repeatable fields support to the API. Looks like I should make sure to add a date range field to the API too.

I’m about 80% complete now. I working on tweaking the core logic for saving/updating/deleting the meta data. After that’s completed I should only have add the saving/updating/deleting to the API and add a couple methods for actually displaying it in the templates.

[Author]

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