How to add the navigation buttons?

lirit

Meaning to put the "New" entry button on the recordset's view (it's now showing up in the listing).
Is there a wiki page that describes on adding this button and others? (for example the "clone" button).

jasiek

Hi,
Here is the page on our wiki about Action Bar buttons (actions):
http://epesi.org/index.php?title=Base/ActionBar

Are you using RecordBrowser (RB) engine? In RB ActionBar icons like New, Delete, Edit, Clone - are generated automatically. It is necessary to define only custom, non-standard actions.

lirit

Thanks!

Yeah I'm using RB.
It's showing up the New button on the listing though I also want the New button to show up on the view of an entry (which is not present by default I guess).

jasiek

It makes sense - so the scenario is like this:
- you are viewing a record and decide that this is not the one you need
- you don't want to go back to Browse mode (or back to previous page whatever it is)
- to save time (and few clicks) you just want to create new record
Correct?

We found that it would be useful to have something like Save and New button - when entering for example multiple records you could save it and immediately have a new blank form to enter another record. Arek - who wrote the entire Record Browse engine - explained that there will be a problem loading this module data defaults and this would require significant changes to RB engine and then all modules. Therefore this will not be implemented in the near future.

If you want to add this New button from record view mode - the results can be erratic.

We have several features to be put in new RB engine - like user defined columns (fields) in browse mode for example.

lirit

It makes sense also in the scenario you described but also in another scenario - where I have an addon module of my own showing up for contacts. So when you add an entry to the module and you save it you are kept in the new module's view. To add another entry you need to go to the contact and click on the + (to add a new entry) for that module addon.

This is why I want to have a New button on the view form as well (but now when I think of it, it wouldn't know what contact to take (unlike when you press the + button from the contact).
Uhmm... maybe a Clone button but definitely a New button as well.

Anyway, to your statement - I'm not sure I got your point, is the Save and New button a problem or the New button a problem? (or both?). What would be an issue with having a New button in the view form?

jasiek

Liran,
Both "New" and "Save and New" buttons - or rather let's call it actions - will be a problem with the current way Record Browser is written.

Maybe this is not very related but we have now "grid" mode data entry. Basically the concept is like this:
- You are in a module for example Contacts.
- You have new module (let's say insurance data) that is linked to Contacts and therefore you show it as an add-on within Contacts.
- The plus icon within this add-on allows you to create new record for this insurance module.
- When creating a record using this method - meaning you are creating from an existing contact - add-on will already preset this contact ID as default. This is defined in the method for the add-on:

public function contacts_addon($arg) {

        $rb = $this->init_module('Utils/RecordBrowser','insurance','insurance');

//        $rb->set_button($this->create_callback_href(array($this,'contacts_addon_new'), array($arg['id'])));

	$rb->set_defaults(array('person'=>$arg['id']));

- If you create new record directly in the insurance module you need to specify the contact.
To specify the contact you will have a select box. However with a lot of records - for example 2,000 - the select will be very long. To eliminate the overhead Record Browser automatically calculates the number of records and if this is more than 50 (which is manageable) it will display what we call auto-select - which is an input box combined with select and RB does not read all 2,000 contacts but there is AJAX query returned to the server based on what you type in the text box. This in turn is evaluated as select (we don't want the user to type a name for non-existing contact) and the contact ID is linked to the new record. This is something you should know.

Full form view of insurance record - edit mode

Anyway - going back to creating this new "insurance" record. If there are many fields they will not fit on the screen in one line - therefore an entire form has to be shown. Because of it you leave the Contact view (form) and go to Insurance module form in Edit view. There is no way around it.

But for modules that hold just few fields - let's say the module insurance holds just 3 fields: Insurance Company (which is a CRM Company that belongs to "Insurance Company" group), Expiration Date and Account number - those 3 fields will fit on one line. Here you can use "grid mode" and be within a contact and still enter new record.

Here is the screenshot from Medical Insurance module showing this technique:

The same record created using grid data entry mode

I hope you will find this info helpful.

lirit

Thanks for the elaborate explanation, screenshots made all the difference too.
Grid Mode looks cool, though as you mentioned - in most cases where there are lots of fields it'll be required to navigate to the new Insurance module to the New action form and once saved to go back to the Contacts module, look-up the contact and then click the + button to add another record of it - a little bit complicated I would say.

If there's a solution that comes along in time, I'd be happy if you could mention it in the forums.

And like always - great job with epesi.

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