I am a long term user and would like xibo to have the ability to store list of URL’s / Tickers items and have them available as dropdown list on webpage or ticker media item respectively with user defined friendly caption/names for that URL and that user friendly caption/name should automatically fill in the Name field on the Edit Ticker/Edit Webpage form when that URL/ ticker is picked from the list.
Just like background image item list. Saves time while typing frequently used URL and gr8 for user experience for non-technical users.
I hope you guys understand what I mean. If not pls reply and I will try to create an image of such a feature.
We used to have it that way and users complained that having to pre-define a URL and give it a name was not good UX as it meant coming out of the designer and then going off to the library to add the URL.
Playlists/timelines coming in 1.8 will mean you could create that media item once and then reuse it other layouts which would give you what you want.
Sure, coming out of designer to define a URL would be bad UX after you have taken time to build that laout.
How about providing a hybrid between a SELECT combo-box and an input text field i.e. a combo box rather than just a select list.
Like a “NEW” options at top of predefined list. When he chooses that, the combo box would be available for typing out the URL. It wouldn’t require bouncing out of designer and still have the luxury to choose from one.
The expected workflow in 1.8 is that you would create a region timeline and then reuse it by name. That way you use the same RSS feed / webpage in all your layouts.
Playlists wouldn’t solve the use case whereby you wanted to have a predefined list of ticker URL’s available for use with whatever ticker template you desired (i.e. 10 subtle different “views” on the same ticker URL).
I’m not sure its worth the payload of creating another object that would need permissions, etc - but 1.8 would make that far more trivial
Thanks for your support. Well I make use of webpages and tickers a lot (i mean a lot) in my layout and so for someone like me a pre-defined list of URL would really in-valuable and speed up designing & publishing and I am no stranger to xibo (been using since v1.2).
I assume that playlist should some what mitigate such need but not entirely however every request might not be feasible or if it’s trivial then perhaps u could provide me the code so it’s entirely your call.
In the community we could also introduce a a poll for new feature request and then further development be based on popularity.
While obviously the community’s views are important, those doing the development work on the system ultimately have the say on what they’ll implement next. If the community feel strongly that something they want isn’t being implemented then they can implement things themselves and contribute them. That’s how Open Source works!
Ok, I assume this feature might not be implemented soon therefore I have decided to give this a try and implement this myself as there is quite a need for it in my case.
Please Dan, Alex can you give some pointers as to where can I start to look in the code for starters.
Just re-stating my need, What I am looking to develop is a native form in xibo to define new webpage URL, associate those with a user friendly names. For e.g
and then have that pre-defined list (or user friendly names) show up in a drop-down list (instead of an empty text-box) in the “Add Webpage” media item form. At this stage, this can live with or without permissions. Enforcing permissions or other validity checks not a priority. Just basic above stated functionality.
I can’t advise exactly where you’d need to look as I’m not that heavily involved with the CMS development. You’d need @dan or @peter to advise on that.
What I can however recommend is that you consider putting this in to 1.8 series in a month or twos time when the first few pre-releases come out.
It’s a big departure from 1.7 series in terms of the code under the hood - so any changes you made to implement that on 1.7 will almost certainly need to be written from the ground up again for 1.8.
I think probably all you need to do is develop a new module for “Named Webpages” or something like that - rather than trying to modify the one that already exists.
Yes developing modules is a good idea but where to begin developing it. Is there a tutorial on this? Can Dan provide some pointers.
BTW, in all likelihood, I will not be upgrading to 1.8 any time soon when released of-course and moreover it will be a learning experience in Xibo development.
You are of course welcome to develop on whatever version you like. My guess
however is that Dan is less likely to want to invest significant time in
helping you if it’s going to an old version rather than the current
development version.
I just had a look at the source and it’s complex than expected (refined over years) so definitely I would need Dan’s guidance however since 1.8 is a month or two away and this feature/mod is a bit urgent I will have to work with the current codebase.
What I am looking for is pointers to get started and then I think I should be able to help myself and of-course some community support.
This is quite an involved topic - but it sounds like all you really want is a key/value array of named associations that you can use throughout the CMS.
If you want these to be “one shot” - i.e. they are used to provide a list of feeds to select when you create a ticker, then that should be quite easy.
If you want these to be updated - i.e. you update the list and then all the Layouts update to suit, then this is definitely non-trivial and you would need to wait for 1.8 to do that effectively.
With option one:
I’d look at taking a copy of the Ticker module, renaming it and inserting the module table record for your new class. You’d need to make sure your render_as setting was html instead of native like the Ticker module.
Then i’d look at changing the add/edit form code to present a list of your key/value pairs, which you have stored somewhere else (how you do this is up to you really? Database? Flat file? etc).
Yes, you are right. I am just looking at a key/value array of named associations but for webpage module (Value: webpage URL’s and their Key: user friendly name) and not for Ticker module.
Nothing additional - the same logic applies (obviously you’d copy the web page module instead!).
If we were to implement this “properly” in 1.8, we’d most likely have some sort of “meta” table which contained an ID, key, groupId and value. The key would identify the module, the groupId the user and the value the webpage url.
We’d probably then implement a auto-complete control on the webpage form which looked up previously entered values as you typed them.
