FPC/Lazarus component like TImageList, but for generic files? - resources

Just like TImageList contains a collection of images, is there a similar component for generic files?
I know I can embed files as resources, but I'd like the convenience of storing different groups of files in different "TFileList" components, and to be able to retrieve files by name or by their position in the list.
Extra points if such a component allowed some sort of design time preview of the file content (just like TImageList lets you see what each image looks like, at design time).
(I come from Delphi where I wrote my own component to do the above, but before I rewrite and port the property editor and all that to Lazarus, maybe there is already something that is tried and tested...)
Thanks!

You can use pre-defined lazarus TFPGList to specialize list of the type, that you want, for example - UTF8String
But, there's no T<>List as a component, only as object.
So, yes, this feature will be useful and i can implement, if have time,
also, there's a very limited RTTI, which has been updated only a few months ago, so you can access Methods and Properties now, so FP is more systemized, than delphi pascal, but also not so enterprise-developed, which limits it to implementations for common opensource and shareware project problems.
Nevertheless, it is more stable and supported, even my friends can contribute.

Related

Write custom grid layouts with extbase/fluid but without any extension like gridelements

I look for a tutorial, help or an example that tells me what I have to do to write a grid element like 2-colums in basic typo3 (v9) with fluid but no other extension like gridelements, DCE, Templa Voila, etc. I want the same gridelements can do but I dont want to be depended to this extention and move it in my own site extention.
I tried the same with normal content elements (CE) like here:
https://docs.typo3.org/c/typo3/cms-fluid-styled-content/9.5/en-us/AddingYourOwnContentElements/Index.html
But how can I nest a CE in a CE? And how can I do this by drag&drop in the backend?
You can't. The page module doesn't support nesting
You can't nest CEs in a CE. On database level this would mean that you have to make a tt_content record a subrecord of a parent tt_content record. You run into several problems, basically the multilanguage support will be broken and the shortcut element does not function as you will expect it to. That is why the extensions "gridelements" and "mask" exist.
I integrated the gridelements configuration into my sitepackage. So I do not need to bother anymore with it.
Just for your info:
There is now an initiative that works on integrating this functionality into the core (Structured Content Initiative, https://typo3.org/article/a-structured-content-initiative/). Stay tuned to it.
There is nothing special about providing Gridelements via external files, since it's based on TSconfig, TypoScript and Fluid. That's why there is not that much about it in the documentation, since it's the same thing you would do with any other kind of sitepackage. The TSconfig and TypoScript parameters are already explained there, while the Fluid would be up to you anyway.
To have a kind of kickstarter just take any extensions providing Gridelements layouts as an example. A very popular one would be bootstrap_grids, which can be found in the TER or here: https://github.com/laxap/bootstrap_grids
You don't necessarily need the flexform controller of that extension, but the Configuration and Resources folders, show you how to configure stuff and you can see how that is included via ext_localconf.php
There are even comments i.e. in the TSconfig files to explain what is possible there and how to handle i.e. mixed environments with record and file based setups. Although it would be recommended to go for files.
You would at least have to add the necessary backend rendering methods to a draw item hook, that will modify the preview of the container element.
So basically you would have to rewrite everything that DCE, Flux, Gridelements or other similar extensions already do.
Which brings us to the question, why you want to avoid those extensions, since especially those three are well known, widely spread, well supported and available for currently supported TYPO3 versions.

How to create custom abstract objects with attributes in Typo3?

I am now familiar with "basic" Typo3 - Usage and templating. Right now, I am stuck though, because I am not familiar with custom extensions etc.
I am looking for a way to represent Objects, that I get via methods of my own php-class from an XML-DB-Interface, in Typo3.
To be more precise :
I have a really complex XML-Interface and a php-class which is complete already, to interact with that interface, making methods available, that are meant to interact with different object-types in the underlying DB.
I now want to create abstract objects with the corresponding attributes in Typo3 to be able to work with them in typo3 (display/create/modify).
Furthermore, it would be helpful to find a way to "link" the functions of my php class to typo3-functions, so I can (perhaps?!) build up some kind of simple report-generator that generates conditional reports of those objects.
Could anybody lead me into the right direction and link (a) HowTo(s) or perhaps even examples that I could modify?
Thanks in advance, Oliver
Check how DBAL extension is coded.
https://docs.typo3.org/typo3cms/extensions/dbal/
You might want to implement this XML system as your own abstraction system to store your objects and use TYPO3 backend forms to manipulate those.

Any way in Expression Engine to simulate Wordpress' shortcode functionality?

I'm relatively new to Expression Engine, and as I'm learning it I am seeing some stuff missing that WordPress has had for a while. A big one for me is shortcodes, since I will use these to allow CMS users to place more complex content in place with their other content.
I'm not seeing any real equivalent to this in EE, apart from a forthcoming plugin that's in private beta.
As an initial test I'm attempting to fake shortcodes by using delimited strings (e.g. #foo#) in the content field, then using a regex to pull those out and pass them to a function that can retrieve the content out of EE's database.
This brings me to a second question, which is that in looking at EE's API docs, there doesn't appear to be a simple means of retrieving the channel entries programmatically (thinking of something akin to WP's built-in get_posts function).
So my questions are:
a) Can this be done?
b) If so, is my method of approaching it reasonable? Or is there something stupidly obvious I'm missing in my approach?
To reiterate, my main objective here is to have some means of allowing people managing content to drop a code in place in their content that will be replaced with channel content.
Thanks for any advice or help you can give me.
Here's a simple example of the functionality you're looking for.
1) Start by installing Low Replace.
2) Create two Global Variables called gv_hello and gv_goodbye with the values "Hello" and "Goodbye" respectively.
3) Put this text into the body of an entry:
[say_hello]
Nice to see you.
[say_goodbye]
4) Put this into your template, wrapping the Low Replace tag around your body field.
{exp:low_replace
find="[say_hello]|[say_goodbye]"
replace="{gv_hello}|{gv_goodbye}"
multiple="yes"
}
{body}
{/exp:low_replace}
5) It should output this into your browser:
Hello
Nice to see you.
Goodbye
Obviously, this is a really simple example. You can put full blown HTML into your global variable. For example, we've used that to render a complex, interactive graphic that isn't editable but can be easily dropped into a page by any editor.
Unfortunately, due to parse order issues, EE tags won't work inside Global Variables. If you need EE tags in your short code output, you'll need to use Low Variables addon instead of Global Variables.
Continued from the comment:
Do you have examples of the kind of shortcodes you want to support/include? Because i have doubts if controlling the page-layout from a text-field or wysiwyg-field is the way to go.
If you want editors to be able to adjust layout or show/hide extra parts on the page, giving them access to some extra fields in the channel, is (imo) much more manageable and future-proof. For instance some selectfields, a relationship (or playa) field, or a matrix, to let them choose which parts to include/exclude on a page, or which entry from another channel to pull content from.
As said in the comment: i totally understand if you want to replace some #foo# tags with images or data from another field (see other answers: nsm-transplant, low_replace). But, giving an editor access to shortcodes and picking them out, is like writing a template-engine to generate ee-template code for the ee-template-engine.
Using some custom fields to let editors pick and choose parts to embed is, i think, much more manageable.
That being said, you could make a plugin to parse the shortcodes from a textareas content, and then program a lot, to fetch data from other modules you want to support. For channel entries you could build out of the channel data library by objectiveHTML. https://github.com/objectivehtml/Channel-Data
I hear you, I too miss shortcodes from WP -- though the reason they work so easily there is the ubiquity of the_content(). With the great flexibility of EE comes fewer blanket solutions.
I'd suggest looking at NSM Transplant. It should fit the bill for you.
There is also a plugin called Shortcode, which you can find here at
Devot-ee
A quote from the page:
Shortcode aims to allow for more dynamic use of content by authors and
editors, allowing for injection of reusable bits of content or even
whole pieces of functionality into any field in EE

Can I associate custom metadata with an ALAsset?

I'm building an iPhone app that, among other things, allows the user to take and store photographs associated with locations. I am currently using the ALAssetLibrary to allow the photographs to be stored in Photos and be accessible outside the app (on a computer for instance via the built-in mechanisms). There is not a lot of technical content out there for working with the ALAssetLibrary but from what there is I have managed to cobble together a working version of this. I have had to resort to storing a dictionary of photo URLS in my app and manually detecting if the photo still exists when displaying lists of them because there does not seem to be a way to add custom metadata to an ALAsset.
What I would really like to do is add two custom metadata fields to each asset to provide it with a title and a custom id value that I can use to filter on when enumerating the asset library.
As a secondary task, I'd like the user to be able to update the title metadata.
Can it be done? At this point, I really don't think it can because the API really doesn't seem to provide the necessary methods to get/set custom metadata. I'm hoping against all odds that there is some other aspect to the AssetLibrary framework that I have not yet discovered.
At a minimum, if someone can authoritatively say "NO" then at least others might find this breadcrumb on their own trail of hope and change tack more quickly!
And, having 0 reputation I can't tag it with AssetLibrary :( wow, this day is just going downhill. FML
I've been looking over the documentation and I dont think it is possible to tack on additional fields to the ALAsset object, well you can create your own object or extend theirs but that wont help you when your pulling back assets because you'll need to init yours and populate it then.
Look I know this falls short of a really good answer but I had to try.
The ALAsset class documentation describes a property - customMetadata. This is documented to be an NSDictionary of whatever custom tags you want. Currently, however, it is not implemented in the class (I've raised a bug on Apple's developer site to bring the issue up).

What are the principles of developing web-applications with action-based java frameworks?

Background
I'm going to develop a new web-application with java. It's not very big or very complex and I have enough time until it'll "officially" start.
I have some JSF/Facelets development background (about half a year). And I also have some expirience with JSP+JSTL.
In self-educational purpose (and also in order to find the best solution) I want to prototype the new project with one of action-based frameworks. Actually, I will choose between Spring MVC and Stripes.
Problem
In order to get correct impression about action-based frameworks (in comparison with JSF) I want to be sure that I use them correctly (in a bigger or a lesser extent).
So, here I list some most-frequent tasks (at least for me) and describe how I solve them with JSF. I want to know how they should be solved with action-based framework (or separately with Spring MVC and Stripes if there is any difference for concrete task).
Rendering content: I can apply ready-to-use component from standard jsf libraries (core and html) or from 3rd-party libs (like RichFaces). I can combine simple components and I can easily create my own components which are based on standard components.
Rendering data (primitive or reference types) in the correct format: Each component allow to specify a converter for transforming data in both ways (to render and to send to the server). Converter is, as usual, a simple class with 2 small methods.
Site navigation: I specify a set of navigation-cases in faces-config.xml. Then I specify action-attribute of a link (or a button) which should match one or more of navigation cases. The best match is choosen by JSF.
Implementing flow (multiform wizards for example): I'm using JSF 1.2 so I use Apache Orchestra for the flow (conversation) scope.
Form processing: I have a pretty standard java-bean (backing bean in JSF terms) with some scope. I 'map' form fields on this bean properties. If everything goes well (no exceptions and validation is passed) then all these properties are set with values from the form fields. Then I can call one method (specified in button's action attribute) to execute some logic and return string which should much one of my navigation cases to go to the next screen.
Forms validation: I can create custom validator (or choose from existing) and add it to almost each component. 3rd-party libraries have sets of custom ajax-validators. Standard validators work only after page is submitted. Actually, I don't like how validation in JSF works. Too much magic there. Many standard components (or maybe all of them) have predefined validation and it's impossible to disable it (Maybe not always, but I met many problems with it).
Ajax support: many 3rd-party libraries (MyFaces, IceFaces, OpenFaces, AnotherPrefixFaces...) have strong ajax support and it works pretty well. Until you meet a problem. Too much magic there as well. It's very difficult to make it work if it doesn't work but you've done right as it's described in the manual.
User-friendly URLs: people say that there are some libraries for that exist. And it can be done with filters as well. But I've never tried. It seems too complex for the first look.
Thanks in advance for explaning how these items (or some of them) can be done with action-based framework.
I'll do my best to answer regarding Stripes. I've used Struts and JSF in the past, but not recently, so at best I have vague notions and feelings about them.
We are intimately familiar w/ Stripes, use it for most everything now, and really enjoy it. It is easy to jump into, supports many of the complicated scenarios, but you are also free to work OUTSIDE of it, which is really important when you want to build your own ajax widgets or talk to another system or something.
If you go the stripes route, I definitely recommend buying or download the book. It is a one stop shop for everything you need for Stripes, and is practically the only documentation for Stripersist (really nice feature, but NO web docs).
Rendering content: I can apply ready-to-use component from standard jsf libraries (core and html) or from 3rd-party libs (like RichFaces). I can combine simple components and I can easily create my own components which are based on standard components.
This is similar. Core, Html, Fmt, etc. as well as any custom tags you find, inc. display:tag, pack tag, and create your own. However, obviously you do not deal at the component level now, you deal with a tag that determines what is on the page / sent to or from the server.
Rendering data (primitive or reference types) in the correct format: Each component allow to specify a converter for transforming data in both ways (to render and to send to the server). Converter is, as usual, a simple class with 2 small methods.
Stripes has many built in converters, and it is easy to create custom converters for your more complex data types. Stripes supports very complex data structures to be mapped with little hassle. Combined with Stripersist, for example, I can put my model object directly on the ActionBean, put a few of the fields on the form, and Stripersist will hydrate the model from the db (based on its PK) and update that with the fields I put on the form - all before releasing control to me on the ActionBean.
Site navigation: I specify a set of navigation-cases in faces-config.xml. Then I specify action-attribute of a link (or a button) which should match one or more of navigation cases. The best match is choosen by JSF.
Navigation in stripes is based on what you name the ActionBeans, initially. There is no xml. Additionally, pretty urls are an annotation at the ActionBean level in Stripes 1.5, so you can do things like #UrlBinding("/{$event}/{model}") where /view/5 would take you to the "view" event handler for your Model object with the ID/PK of 5.
Implementing flow (multiform wizards for example): I'm using JSF 1.2 so I use Apache Orchestra for the flow (conversation) scope.
While I only am vaguely familiar with the concept of conversation scope, Stripes has Wizard Form functionality, but I haven't used it and am unable to really expand on that. I think it is a similar idea though.
Form processing: I have a pretty standard java-bean (backing bean in JSF terms) with some scope. I 'map' form fields on this bean properties. If everything goes well (no exceptions and validation is passed) then all these properties are set with values from the form fields. Then I can call one method (specified in button's action attribute) to execute some logic and return string which should much one of my navigation cases to go to the next screen.
Not drastically different. Instead of components on your [action] bean, you now have Java or custom types. ActionBeans are created per request and thrown away, unless you do something like put it in session, or wizard, or whatever. This is nice, because all the instance variables get mapped to the data from the form, you use it, then throw it away, and don't have to deal with any synchronization issues like struts did. After you do your thing with the data, Stripes lets you send a ForwardResolution (OK status), Redirect, or Streaming (JSON, file, etc). The Redirect-after-POST pattern is implemented nicely with the idea of flash scope (3/4 down the page).
Forms validation: I can create custom validator (or choose from existing) and add it to almost each component. 3rd-party libraries have sets of custom ajax-validators. Standard validators work only after page is submitted. Actually, I don't like how validation in JSF works. Too much magic there. Many standard components (or maybe all of them) have predefined validation and it's impossible to disable it (Maybe not always, but I met many problems with it).
Stripes allows validation in annotations on the instance variables on the ActionBean. They allow some defaults, required, maxlength, etc. or you can always create your own. The default is easy to add and flexible, while there is always the ability to make something completely customized.
Ajax support: many 3rd-party libraries (MyFaces, IceFaces, OpenFaces, AnotherPrefixFaces...) have strong ajax support and it works pretty well. Until you meet a problem. Too much magic there as well. It's very difficult to make it work if it doesn't work but you've done right as it's described in the manual.
This was my big problem with the JSF way of doing things. Even if you did get the widget right, you're still stuck with THAT widget. With Stripes, you can use whatever latest and greatest Jquery has to offer, and as long as you send the right GET or POST to the server, stripes knows what to do with it and can easily send JSON back. I think component frameworks fit a niche a few years ago much better when AJAX was hard, but JQ makes it so easy now.
User-friendly URLs: people say that there are some libraries for that exist. And it can be done with filters as well. But I've never tried. It seems too complex for the first look.
#UrlBinding, it's as easy as that.
My answer is not the one you want to hear: Don't switch from Component Framework to action framework
I switched the other way around after many years of action framework development and I'm never going back.
Of the 8 use cases you mentioned, only one comes to mind where Action frameworks are obviously better, and that is URL design / friendly URLs. It can be done in component frameworks as well, but much easier in Action Frameworks (especially in Stripes where you just annotate your ActionBean with the url).
I would advise you to try wicket, it is very easy to learn (much easier than JSF) and it let's you re-use many existing components as well.

Resources