Re: Virtual links vs. real links

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 16:42:41 -0800, Ken Restivo <ken@restivo.org> wrote: > Studying > http://opensource.21st.de/tiki-index.php?page=Beyond+Advanced > > I'm curious why I would use virtual links as opposed to "real" links? > > In other words, instead of doing a virtual link, why wouldn't I just add it to my > links.ini file and let FB figure out that it's a link? It's not like it'd make much > sense to have a link to another table, but not have that tables PK in the current table anyway. Or > would it? > Well, the point of a virtual link was that it was for a virtual field. A virtual field (at least how I do it) should have no entry in the db ini file. So it makes sense that the virtual field has no entry in the links ini file. So I override the links() function to add it. > Also, I can't see much use for making a text field turn into a dynamic link in case where > "links" is typed in, but I could easily see a use for the converse: switching from a link > to a regular text field if the value is "Other"... and in fact I will likely end up doing > that if there isn't some example of it already out there that I can cut and paste. > Well, the idea I had was for the value of some *other* field to change whether a field was a text box or a link. So, after initially creating the record, when you edit it if a certain field was set a certain way, the dynamic field becomes a link. Basically "Beyond Advanced" is just a place where I put all of my ideas. Most of them I've used, but Dynamic Links I have no yet used. It was just an idea I had. > Or, it seems like virtual fields would be useful for a combo field: a combination select box > and "other" box. The insert() and update() fields would then check to see if the select > box's value is "Other..." and insert the value of the virtual "other" field > in that case, and return its last_insert_id and put that into the selectbox's field and then > insert/update that... ugh. Again, I'm surprised if there isn't example code of that online > already, but if not I don't think it'll be to difficult to cook up. > This sounds like a great idea. If you make any examples or tutorials for this I'd be glad to add them to our docs. :-) -- Justin Patrin