Query-based tab?

[gorzek]

Sorry for bombarding the board with questions... hopefully I will have fewer of them as I dig deeper into Xataface.

I want to have a top-level tab (on the same level as all tables) that is based on the results of a query but displays just like any other tab. Basically, it will display values from another table, but constrained by a query.

I can run the query I want in the delegate class just fine, and parse the results there, but I really just want it to use the standard list/view algorithms based on the results of my query. Is there, for instance, a function I can pass each row to that will render it correctly? (RenderRow doesn't seem to work for this, as-is.)

[shannah]

If you are using mysql 5, the easiest way to do this is with a view (as you can use views almost like normal tables).

If you don't have this luxury, the easiest way is probably just to create a link using the xataface url conventions with the query that you like. You can then add this link to the table tabs at the top quite easily (see http://xataface.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4537 ) for information on appending arbitrary links to the tables menus.

-Steve

[gorzek]

I thought about using a view. I suppose I could do that, but I would still need to filter it down--I wouldn't want a separate table for every user.

The link you provided looks promising, in any case. A custom action may be the way to go, here. Thanks!

[shannah]

Hi Gorzek,

If it is the case that you want to filter the results of a table for different users, you can do this is multiple ways.

1. If you want to prevent the user from seeing certain records, you can use security filters. (http://xataface.com/documentation/how-t ... ty_filters)

2. If you don't necessarily want to prevent the user from seeing certain records but you want to filter the records for the user's convenience, you can either provide the user with a link directly to the table with appropriate queries in place (e.g. index.php?-table=foo&-action=list&ownerID=10 for all foo records with ownerID = 10) (as described in my previous post), or you can add a snippet of PHP to the beginning of your index.php file to add the appropriate query parameters.


-Steve

[gorzek]

Putting it right in the query is exactly what I was thinking of! I knew I had done it somehow before, and that's exactly what it was. It was something I wrote a couple years ago, and for the life of me, I couldn't remember how I did it. Making a tab that filters just by the user is exactly what I want. I will give this a shot, but I think that is just what I was looking for! Thanks!

[gorzek]

I noticed that putting a field value in the URL does not seem to work for calculated fields. Is there a way around that? I actually want to filter the list view based on the value of a calculated field.

I did use a MySQL view for a while, but it ended up being a lot of maintenance, because all I really wanted was a filtered view for user convenience, but did not want to constrain their actions--I still wanted them to be able to add records to the real table behind the view, etc. It ended up being a significant hassle and I tried to go back to a single table and no view.

What I am trying to do is have a table of projects, and another table listing the project's users. A tab called "My Projects" is meant to display all the projects to which you belong. I created a calc field called "isuser" for that purpose, which joins the tables and determines if the current user is on that project. However, I cannot filter by adding "&isuser=1" to the URL. It just doesn't do anything--it displays all records, regardless. If I could use that calc field to filter, that would really be ideal.

I didn't like using a view because, as I said, it tried to perform all actions on the view (which is not allowed for anything that changes data, of course), when I really just wanted it to fall back to the real projects table.

Do you have any ideas here?

[gorzek]

I figured it out. I kept getting errors when doing a LEFT JOIN between the tables. It turned out it was because I was specifying a "timestamp" field. I guess MySQL doesn't cotton to that.

In any case, I extracted one field from the join, and am using that to filter. I don't need to display it--it's nothing more than a field to indicate what users should see a given project, if specified in the URL.

Thanks again!

[andperry]

I've found a need to do the same sort of thing. I'm new to MySQL views - learned about them via this thread, so decided to try it out. Created some views and they seem to be OK - the records all display correctly using phpMyAdmin.

Tried adding the views to the Xataface application by adding their names/descriptions to the table list in conf.ini. At this stage I have not created any configuration files for the individual views. When clicking the tab for one of the views, get a server error to say that the page cannot be displayed.

Any ideas what might be going wrong? Am I missing something?

Thanks,

Andrew.

[shannah]

When using views in Xataface you have to specify the primary key in the fields.ini file for the view.

e.g.

Code: Select all

[person_id]
    Key=PRI


Capitals matter here.

If that doesn't get you going, check your error log.