[TYPO3-dam] Hints for developer

[René Fritz]

Here are a few hints for developers:

The codebase was cleaned up heavily which means that your applications (eg. 
plugins) might not work anymore. In general that shouldn't happen because 
there were never an API to use - now there's one. All plugins I know use 
direct DB access to fetch DAM data which is still working because the table 
tx_dam did not change.

If you made dam submodules it is very likely that they will not work anymore, 
but the changes are minimal and you should be able to get it work within an 
hour. Just have a look in the shipped modules.

If you have problem to get your stuff running, feel free to ask me to help 
you.

You may wonder why I did this. When you have a closer look at the API you will 
understand. It's sooo much cleaner and simpler to understand that before.

With the extdeveval extension you can browse the new API. 
You can also have a look in the source of dam/lib/class.tx_dam.php which is 
the main API.
The dam_demo extension has some examples of how to extend the DAM. This 
extension still do not show all functions but most of them.


What's new for developers?

Of course the API, but also some functions are new.

There are "previewer". Edit an image record and go with the mouse over the 
thumnail - it will be zoomed. Edit an mp3 record and you will get a small 
player in the header of the record. These previewers are not hardcoded. The 
dam_demo extension have an example of a flash file viewer.
These previewer are planned to be used on other locations too - even in FE.

Uploads references
The files in uploads/ are not managed by the DAM because they are copies of 
the original files or direct uploads to a content element.
with tx_dam_db::getMetaForUploads() you can get the meta data for an uploads 
files when the file is indexed also by the DAM in fileadmin. The DAM 
identifies the uploads files  by a hash which will be generated 
automatically. For first usage you can use the Tools>Update-Index module to 
generate the index.


Actions
Actions are the little icons in the list module which delete an item for 
example. these actions are not hardcoded anymore and you can register your 
own actions. This is implemented in the Media>File module. The List module 
will follow soon.
That way can can integrate your own BE functions easily.

The same will be available with "editors". This feature is in development and 
provide an API to register and implement file editors. An example is a text 
editor which edits the content or an image cropping module.


... and some more. Just have a look or ask.

Have a nice evening.

René

-- 
COLORCUBE
digital media lab

www.colorcube.de