Hi -

I know I can edit xoops_versions.php to have multiple instances of a block, but is there some easy way to let people add another copy of a block via the admin interface?

I hate to tell people to go edit xoops_versions.php to change their UI.

Tom
P.S. Why? Imagine that someone is setting up a bookstore, and wants to use the block that displays a single book cover in both the upper left and upper right corners of a page.

Hi -

I'd like to set the title of my block when it is installed.

I know how to change it after it is installed, but not how to get it to start with the title I want.

And no, I don't want the title and the name to be the same.

Tom

It's sort of a feature. If your database query returns 0 rows, then the block doesn't show.

It's usually what you want.

Except maybe when debugging.

Tom

Hi -

One of the things I did when I was getting annoyed writing blocks, was write a debug block. It's just about the simplest block you can do, so there's very little to go wrong. I can start by installing it, then I can make sure I have everything right for the simple case. Then I can add code from my real block, until I can see what causes a problem.

Note that while I was just off cleaning this up, it was not showing up for me, even after repeated reloads of the module. I uninstalled the module, and re-installed it, and there it was. So try that, too.


Here are the parts of my block:

from xoops_version.php:


Start your block indexes at 1, not zero.!

And this forum keeps changing the code I'm posting below for debugblock.php. It keeps turning my urls in debugblock.php into a hyperlink.

So when copying and pasting the section below, make sure you paste the code below as text, not HTML. the values in the array should just be
h t t p : // www.worldware.com, and not
a href h t t p: // www.worldware.com

Note to XOOPS team: things within code blocks should not be altered. That's a bug!

blocks\debugblock.php:


<?php
function b_bookstore_debug()

{
$sites = array
(
"xoops.org" => "https://xoops.org",
"worldware.com" => "http://www.worldware.com"
);
$block = array();
$link = array();
foreach ($sites as $site => $url)
{
$link['site'] = $site;
$link['url'] = $url;
$block['links'][] = $link;
}
return $block;
}
?>


templates\blocks\bookstore_debug.html:

I know exactly how you feel. I had the same experience when starting to write for xoops.

I don't know if it's worth much, but I wrote up an article on debugging xoops, and posted it on my site.

http://www.worldware.com/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticle&artid=2

I don't know if it will help. Most of it is obvious. Right after someone tells you

Comments are welcome.

Tom

Well, that did seem to make the reloading problem go away.

I wonder why?

Tom

And, just to reply to my own post, I'll observe that sorting has more value if blocks are named consistently.

All of the bookstore blocks have names that start with "bookstore:", so I don't have to hunt for them.

I'd encourage other module developers to do the same.

Tom

Why toggle? The current order appears random. Does it have some value that should be preserved?

If not, simpler to not add a UI item to toggle on/off.

I really think that all of XOOPS need to sort lists. Randomly hunting for things in the UI is not an efficient use of time.

Tom

Sounds like a problem for me, too. I was looking at adding comments to the bookstore module, but the bookstore is keyed off of the amazon id, which is a large alphanumeric field (e.g. B0000AXE8I).

I could make a dummy "id for comments" field, but that wouldn't work as well, for a number of reasons.

Any suggestions?

Tom

I'm trying to make the next version more international friendly.

Perhaps someone can explain to me a simple way to use the defines in languages/xxx/template.php in templates directly.

If I have

define("_AM_BOOKSTORE_LANG_AUTHOR", "Authors");

I'd like to put something like the following in the template code:

<{$_AM_BOOKSTORE_LANG_AUTHOR}>

But it doesn't work.

I can just make a list of all the entries in the defines, like this:

$intl = array
(
"error" =>_AM_BOOKSTORE_LANG_ERROR,
"author" =>_AM_BOOKSTORE_LANG_AUTHOR,
"sales_rank" =>_AM_BOOKSTORE_LANG_SALES_RANK,
"publisher" =>_AM_BOOKSTORE_LANG_PUBLISHER,
"published" =>_AM_BOOKSTORE_LANG_PUBLISHED,
"our_price" =>_AM_BOOKSTORE_LANG_OUR_PRICE,
"more_info" =>_AM_BOOKSTORE_LANG_MORE_INFO,
"notice" =>_AM_BOOKSTORE_LANG_PLEASE_NOTE,
);

And pass it into the template. It just seems inefficient to have to define the extra list.

Any suggestions?

Tom