[TYPO3-mvc] Building up a generic BE module for managing domain records - need conceptual help

[Franz Koch]

Hey list,

I currently have the requirement to build up an enhanced backend module 
to manage certain domain records of my customer. In a first step, there 
should "only" be a listView, linking to the TCEform editing. "Only" 
because it should have the same features as the list module in Typo3, 
enhanced by various filter options, filter options like in a query 
builder but kept a bit simpler.

I'm currently in the concept phase of the project and already have an 
idea on how I could build up the filters - but what I'm really not sure 
about is on how to best build the list view, where the editor can decide 
which columns/properties he likes to see. I not sure how to handle this 
in FLUID and am open for opinions.

I think I might need a viewHelper that I pass a propertiesToDisplay 
object/array to, as well as an array/objectStorage with records to 
display. The viewHelper is then building rows per object based on the 
propertiesToDisplay settings. But how to handle different property types 
while rendering them? Some properties are relations to other objects, 
some are TCA select fields and some string, integers, float or need a 
price formatting.
I know that I could create rendering settings for each property by hand 
and wrap them with a if-condition checking if this property is visible, 
but this doesn't feel good, as it's no the generic approach I aim for.

I'm even not sure if I should put the rendering logic of the properties 
to the view, because what if I switch the view to a ExtJS grid? So 
should I probably create a service that's building up a plain array with 
the properly rendered values, which I then can pass to a much simpler 
view or to ExtJS via JSON?

How would you solve this? I'm thankful for every opinion on this.



The next step after this will be a export functionality for the filtered 
record sets including their dependencies (propably in own Excel sheets 
if the export will be a Excel file) - but that's a different story.

-- 
kind regards,
Franz Koch