Re: How to connect 2 Dynamic Objects ?

In article <bd2ouj$bhg$1-111RdWWlOxkOkXtL6OYfHgC/[email protected]>, [email protected] (eolica) wrote:
>Hannes wrote:
>> i saw here the Howto from eolica to add an publiction type "contact".
>> (03/06/03)
>> How can i connect the Contact with the Contries Object , so that i can use
>> an DropDown-Box in the
>> ContactForm to choose an Country?
>
>If you want just the country names, you don't need another publication.
>Just use a simple dropdown and include the list of the countries in the
>Validation (Italy; France; Germany; ...).
>
>If your needs are wider (let say: you want to store the countries and get
>also the associated images for flags) its another story.
>
>In my understanding relations to other publications are not implemented
>(yet?)
>
>Sesto

Right, there's no built-in support for relationships between objects, but
you can easily maintain the relationship yourself, e.g. as follows :

1) create a function <mymodule>_userapi_getcountries that returns an array
of id => name pairs for your countries.
[Example : modules/dynamicdata/xarutilapi/demolist.php]

If countries are objects too, you'll probably want to retrieve the id's and
names via something like :

$items = xarModAPIFunc('dynamicdata','user','getitems',
                       array(// your module
                             'modid' => 123,
                             // itemtype that corresponds to your countries
                             'itemtype' => 1,
                             // fields you're interested in here
                             'fieldlist' => array('myid','myname')));

Otherwise, just return some predefined list of countries...

2) in your contacts object, specify the country property as a dropdown list
and give it the validation xarModAPIFunc('mymodule','user','getcountries')

3) in your functions and templates, you can enforce the parent-child
relationship via e.g. the country id. For instance, if you want to
display the country and view the contacts in that country :

<!-- display or retrieve or whatever ... the country -->
<xar:data-display module="mymodule" itemtype="1" itemid="$countryid" />

<!-- list or retrieve or whatever ... the contacts for that country -->
<xar:data-view module="mymodule" itemtype="2" where="countryid eq $countryid" 
/>
<!-- note : you may need to define the where clause in your function
     and pass on a $where variable here - try it out :) -->

Or use any of the other methods shown in the dyn_example module to
retrieve the objects you want in a particular page...

Mike.