New to Fabrik!

[terryzzz]

Hi there. Just subscribed and after information as I know very little about Fabrik but hope that I can achieve what I need to with this plugin. I emailed a query prior to subscription but no one replied to tell me if what I want to do is even possible with Fabrik, but as I heard nothing I've bitten the bullet and paid anyway. Theres faith for ya!

I want to know if the site detailed in the attached PDF is possible please? It doesn't seem very in-depth, but I know nothing so hopefully you will tell me if it is and guide me in the right direction.

Cheers
Terry

 

[cheesegrits]

I think that may be one I replied to but it bounced as undeliverable.

Yes, looking at your PDF, I think that's all do-able. May not look exactly like your mockups, but all the functionality would be there.

What I suggest you do is a quick proof of concept / rapid prototype, to get a feel for Fabrik, and get your data structures and work flow straight. That will either form the basis of the completed project, or be something you can throw away and start again, applying lessons learned.

So start by creating your two main Lists, for Consultants and Clients, with just the basic elements you need for each. Things like name, email, status, etc.

-- hugh

 

[terryzzz]

Hi Hugh. Thank you for your reply. Sorry for the delay getting back to you... work you know :/ .

I have got to a part in the site where certain things are functional, I obviously have an idea of where I want it to go with it, but its just the knowledge of how thats the tricky part.

Can I contact you privately to send you site details so you can take a look and perhaps steer me in the right direction?

Cheers
Terry

 

[rob]

Hi
it would probably be best to keep the conversation in the forum, so that both Hugh or myself can answer to you.
I would break down each of your issues into a new topic post and we can deal with each of them separately
I would also ask you to fill in your site details here http://fabrikar.com/you/my-sites/ so we can log in and take a look at where you currently are in your project.

 

[terryzzz]

Hi Rob, thanks for the reply.

I have given the site details and superuser access.

My next step that I can see I need to do is:

In the Holding Pool (which should only be viewable by a logged in Consultant or Office), have a button that attaches the client to the Consultant clicking the button, therefore removing it from the Holding Pool and from any other consultant attaching it to their client list.

I have managed to make a button appear in the client details, but I have no idea how to implement its purpose? And I'd rather the button appear in the Holding Pool list rather than the client details. Is this possible?

Cheers

 

[cheesegrits]

I can't view the "Holding Pool" list with the login you gave us.

However, this should be possible with the "Update Col" list plugin. Assuming you have a 'user' element in your client table which specified who "owns" the client, you should be able to use Update Col to change that element to the currently logged on user, by setting the "value" to ...

return JFactory::getUser()->get('id');

... and setting "Eval" to "Yes", which will evaluate the value as PHP code.

-- hugh

 

[cheesegrits]

Here's a quick screencast of setting up an Update Col plugin on a list, to change a 'user' element to the logged on user ...

Note that it doesn't have to be a 'user' element (which will default to the current user when a form is created), it can be a join element to the #_users table, or just a simple field element set to type Integer. Just needs to be a field in the table which you store a userid in, which can then be used for filtering and access control.

http://screencast.com/t/hBuqAuOB

BTW, ignore the debugger which pops up the first time I try out the button, that was an old breakpoint I had in the code from a few days ago.

Also, watching this screencast makes me think we should probably have an option to put up a loading GIF after using an action button, to make it clear the list is reloading.

-- hugh

 

[terryzzz]

Hi There,

In the notes section of the site details I gave 3 User logins for the 3 different access types. However I have opened up the Holding Pool menu item for general access (I hope)

The screencast thingy is awesome... what a helpful tool! I followed your instructions using the Consultant element for the User Id. Unfortunately when I did, the Holding Pool no longer displays and gives the following error:

Fatal error: Call to undefined method PlgFabrik_ListUpdate_Col::getLayout() in /home/gigitzzz/public_html/plugins/fabrik_list/update_col/update_col.php on line 561

I'm sure its probably an easy fix and possibly due to a setting I haven't set correctly elsewhere. :/

I can see what you're achieving with this method. Its all very clever and I think Fabrik is amazing but just wish I knew how to utilise it more... all in good time.

I also agree with the 'Please Wait' GIF.

Thank you for your assistance.

 

[cheesegrits]

Looks like you may have done a partial update at some point, and not uploaded all of the github files, or installed a ZIP of update_col from a newer version. That method definitely exists in ./components/com_fabrik/models/plugin-list.php, line 426.

You'll need to do a full github update, which involves download the ZIP from ...

https://github.com/Fabrik/fabrik/archive/joomla3.zip

... unzipping it, and uploading EVERYTHING, overwriting everything on your server. It's a lot of files, but using something like FileZilla you can do it in one click.

-- hugh

 

[terryzzz]

Okay.... in doing this will I need to then rebuild fabrik completely?

I guess if it won't work without it ...makes no difference. lol

 

[troester]

No, nothing to "rebuild". DON'T uninstall (this would remove all your Fabrik work).
You may have mixed some Fabrik versions...

Just do a GitHub update, this won't touch anything (lists, elements, etc.) in your DB, it will only override all Fabrik code with the newest version.

 

[cheesegrits]

Just to second what Troester said ...

Do NOT uninstall, and do NOT try and install the Github ZIP through the J! extension manager.

What you are doing when you update from github is just uploading the latest PHP files "by hand", overwriting those on your server. This won't affect your data or Fabrik "stuff" (forms, elements, etc) at all.

Updating from github is the only way to pick up bug fixes, new features, or otherwise "fix" your install, between actual "version" releases of our installer. For us to build an installable ZIP takes about a whole day, even with the extensive automation we have for doing this. So we can't do it every time we commit a change to github, which we do several times a day, as you can see from the "Latest Commits" widget in the right hand sidebar of the forums.

So this is something you'll need to do from time to time. It's a bit of a pain, as there are so many files, and it takes a while to upload, so if you don't already have a good FTP client, you'll need one - we recommend FileZilla.

One other note about updating form github. Because this is our development repository, where we are introducing new features, trying out changes, etc., as well as fixing bugs, a github update can sometimes introduce more bugs. We STRONGLY recommend that you don't do github updates on live sites. Once your Fabrik project is live, you should test any update (github or a new installable version) on a "sandbox" - a clone of your live site. The best tool for cloning your live site to a sandbox is Akeeba.

-- hugh

 

[terryzzz]

Okay. I have followed your instruction and recommendations and have successfully installed the Github ZIP through Filezilla. I did try to do it through another ftp client but it failed several times so updated my FileZilla and had success first time.
This has corrected the error and all seems well. Your method for adding the client to a particular consultant works very well and I'm thrilled with the excellent support here. Many thank you's!

I feel I will run into a number of challenges building my first Fabrik site (my next being to remove a listing from the Holding Pool once assigned a Consultant but I'm quite eager to try and solve this before calling upon your expertise), and I hope you don't get tired of my need of assistance.

In return, can I offer you a glitch that I noticed recently?

In my listings, I have made the phone number and email elements a custom URL to email or open the call feature with "mailto:{client___refemail}" and "tel:{client___refphone}". When actioning the custom URL for the phone number, it removes the 'zero' at the beginning of the number. I've seen this issue before and found a fix for it on a website, but don't know if this is something that is site dependent or needs to be addressed in Fabrik? Either way its such a minor thing, but useful.

Thanks again

 

[cheesegrits]

In my listings, I have made the phone number and email elements a custom URL to email or open the call feature with "mailto:{client___refemail}" and "tel:{client___refphone}". When actioning the custom URL for the phone number, it removes the 'zero' at the beginning of the number. I've seen this issue before and found a fix for it on a website, but don't know if this is something that is site dependent or needs to be addressed in Fabrik? Either way its such a minor thing, but useful.

Thanks again

It's unlikely to be anything to do with us. We just render the link, it's up to the browser / device what it does with it. But if you can provide a link to the fix you found, I'll take a look.

-- hugh

 

[troester]

What are your element settings for refphone? Did you set it to "integer"? I think this would remove a leading 0.

 

[terryzzz]

What are your element settings for refphone? Did you set it to "integer"? I think this would remove a leading 0.

The element is set to "text". Its happened before on something a long time ago and I found a fix. I'll have another hunt and see if I can find the cause.

 

[terryzzz]

Okay... well things are coming along nicely. I have the sorting and displaying of data correctly working. I do have an issue.

I've tried referring to your wiki data on image overrides and I can't for the life of me figure out how to change the arrow-up.png to another symbol? I want to use the plus-sign.png for the UpdateCol button created earlier.

I?ve tried my best to follow the image overrides instructions but I?m going very wrong somewhere I think. Any ideas?

 

[cheesegrits]

Ah, yes, we need to fix that. The tooltip / wiki is a little out of date.

The plugin icon uses Bootstrap icon classes by default. And rather than the standard BS Glyphicons set, Joomla uses Icomoon ...

https://docs.joomla.org/J3.x:Joomla_Standard_Icomoon_Fonts

So in J! 3, Fabrik assumes your list plugin icon name is an Icomoon icon- class name, so specifying (for example) plus-circle will get you the plus sign in a circle icon.

In answering this question, it became clear that we need to provide a way of enabling the non-BS icon class behavior, for cases where you actually want to specify an actual icon file for an img tag, rather than use BS icon classes weith an i tag.

So I'm working on that atm, and will commit something later today.

For now, you can probably find what you want in that Icomoon set I linked above.

-- hugh

 

[cheesegrits]

OK, I've committed a fix for this, so you can specify either an image file name, like add.png, which will go through the wiki documented image override method, or a valid (icomoon) icon class name, like circle-plus.

Note that we committed some fairly major internal changes to github today. We've been testing the changes for a couple of days, and we're fairly confident about them ... but just be aware that this is one of those days where a github update might introduce some fun new bugs.

The changes are nothing visible, we're just done some stuff that will help us in the future, in implementing automated "unit testing" and insulating us from changes to the J! programming API's.

-- hugh

 

[terryzzz]

Thank you

This is very exciting. I don't think I've ever come across such a proactive support system and network.

In order to implement these new features, do I need to do another full github overwrite?

With regards to the icomoon instructions... well that was kinda easy! lol thanks.