Hi Hugh,
As a follow up on this thread, I've found another way to achieve what we need. Here under the explanations (sorry for the length) as it could be useful to some others. However, I still have two minor glitches that may rise some idea in your brain....
We have around 30 tables in our apps (kind of CRM/ERP). On several of them we use the "search all" filter on top of the list view which is working very well to show up the relevant lines in the list whatever the kind of elements (including multi-select using a underlying repeat table).
The idea was to use the "global search" of Joomla to do a cross table search on many columns. Unfortunately, it does not work on complex elements such as multiselect DBjoin.
Think about finding everything related to the city of Paris. You search for "Paris" and it give you back contacts living in Paris, company'address based on this city, contract concerning the city, suppliers about you wrote a note related to the city, invoices, etc...
One solution would be to display each of these lists and use the search all "paris" in each of them.... tedious !
As we need both the search all feature on complex element on the list level and some kind of "google like global cross list search" we can't use the J! search plugin as per the conclusion of this thread.
So the idea is to use Fabrik list modules to display some lines of each list. Modules are stacked vertically using condensed list view template without any "features" (pagination, edit/add buttons, filters, etc...). Just a simple "table" with the name of the list on the top and the results.
On top of this stack, there is a fabrik form module. It displays a single element (searching text) and the setup is to not record in database. The form itself has a redirect plugin to himself. Here is the Fabrik's magic ! The redirect URL fills also the search for all the modules (4 result modules version) :
Code:
index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10&Itemid=197&___chercher={___chercher}&fabrik_list_filter_all_45_mod_fabrik_list_104={___chercher}&fabrik_list_filter_all_46_mod_fabrik_list_106={___chercher}&fabrik_list_filter_all_47_mod_fabrik_list_107={___chercher}&fabrik_list_filter_all_48_mod_fabrik_list_109={___chercher}
Itemid #197 is a menu item called "Search" which is showing a dummy article. The search module and the list module showing the results are set to display only on this menu item.
"___chercher" is the name of the element in the search form.
The first numbers (45, 46, 47, 48) are the list ids showing in the different modules. The second numbers (104, 106, 107, 109) are the module ids themselves set to show the corresponding lists.
All modules are ajaxified.
So when you type "Paris" in the search form, press submit, it refresh backs all the module contents with the relevant lines in each list containing what you are searching for. Without any code... easy, nice and great !
We use specialized list (s_suppliers, s_invoices, etc...) to display in the module so it's easy to setup the published elements and the ones showing and/or searching for independently of the main list used in the app.
All these specialized lists have access level set to "nobody" except list view. So no buttons nor edit link are shown.
Custom link on some elements are used to link the results to the right detail view (or form view or filtered main list view).
It's very flexible as you can search for the columns you want, display them, sort them, etc... Using some jlayouts override on pagination and some css allow to condense module results as much as possible so page is handy and comfortable to watch.
However I got two things missing to achieve a perfect UX. First the "enter" key as submit feature does not work on the search form (related to the module display ?). Need to click on submit button (renamed "search"). So I added some js on keydown on the element that triggers the submit button when "hearing" the right key :
JavaScript:
if (e.key == 'enter') {
/* console.log('enter !'); */
var form = Fabrik.getBlock('form_49');
form.doSubmit(new Event.Mock(form._getButton('Submit')), form._getButton('Submit'));
}
The second one is more complex and I did not found the right way to get rid of it. When you hit the submit button, it shows a "spinning wheel" div during the time you are waiting for the ajax response. But it's stop too quickly. It does not wait (of course !) for the completion of the list module ajax return. So it's a bit strange as you have the search form displaying back "normally" then after one second, all the list module are reseted to "nothing to show", then after 3-4 seconds, you get all the list modules refreshing showing the expected results.
I think the idea would be to let the form's "spinning div" on until all the ajax return are completed. I don't know where to start. Should I catch each module ajax "update" completion ? Any suggestion ?
Thanks,
