[TYPO3-dev] Dynamic Backend Editing

[Oliver Hader]

Hi everybody,

I had some time to work on "Dynamic Backend Editing". It's all about
integrating different tables in one TYPO3 Backend view and being able to
add new instances of that foreign table. The concept comes close to the
"database relation" but it's a bit different.

Database relations show you all items of a certain table on the current
page or in a global aspect. Then you can select those you want to have.
In Dynamic Backend Editing these items are also stored on a page, but
they only belong to one parent item (the "embedding item"), so the
backend user doesn't see all the others in his select-box (or whatever).

The next thing is, that you don't have to use a wizard to creat new
items and click here, click there, save, click and come back to the
record you usually were working on. This concept offers a possibility to
set these new items of a foreign table (I call it "instances") on the
fly without having to reload the backend view. And it's also possible to
edit these instances right away.

The configuration is done via TCA on using a userFunc. So you use the
usual way to build up your extension (e.g. using the kickstarter). If
you'd like to use dynbeedit, just go to the tca.php and add something
like this:

$TCA['tx_myExtensionTable']['columns']['myField'] = Array(
  'exclude' => 1,		
  'label' => 'something',
    'config' => array(
      'type' => 'user',
      'userFunc' => 'tx_dynbeedit->start',
        'params' => array(
          'table' => 'tx_myOtherExtensionTableToEmbed',
          'singleViewClickBehaviour' => 1,
          'collapseInstances' => 1,
        ),
      ),
    ),
  ),
);

I created a small example, that addresses a problem described here:
http://wiki.typo3.org/index.php/Usability_Innovation_Dynamic_Backend_Editing

Today I uploaded the first very, very alpha release to the TER
("dynbeedit"). It's just proof-of-concept, not finished and maybe some
things have to be completely different in the future or are nonsense.
It's just to get an idea of the whole thing.

For those of you that are interested in that, I've set up a tiny TYPO3
environment with "Dynamic Backend Editing" installed, so have a look at:

http://dev.t3ip.de/typo3/
User: dynbeedit
Pass: (same as the username)


olly