066 The new fields Area to make things easier

THE NEW FIELDS AREA TO MAKE THINGS EASIER

Explaining Changes In The Field Area

00:00:08 (Click on these time links to see Youtube video)

I would like to explain a little bit more about all the changes we've made to the field area. The field area is really the foundation of most of your component. It is what causes many of the behavior and concepts which you might have in your views that are all based on the field. The field area was a difficult place to change and it is still in progress. The interface most probably won't change much, 00:00:38 just little tweaks here and there. The back-end of how we deal with the data, we're certainly going to continue improving that.

A Quick Recap how It used To Look

00:00:46

I just want to give you a quick recap of how it used to look. If we go to an older install of JCB, open a field. If we open the Alias, we would see that it has this XML field definition area. In the past it was very easy to leave out, maybe leaving out anything by accident, change something and then it breaks. We had lot of freedom and as developers I'm sure this didn't feel in anyway to be a problem. Whatever you have selected we build the XML for you and you could just adapt 00:01:33 it as you please. Since we are trying to make JCB more stable and eventually much more user friendly. This new feature was suggested from inside of the team. We decided to add it.

What Did We Do? - Removed The XML Definition Area Replaced It with Sub-form

00:01:55

What did we do? We removed this XML definition and we have replaced it with a sub-form. We've moved the database values to its own tabs. We also moved the field information to its own tab. We add a lot of more structures and tools to the page. I'm very sure you are going to be very glad to see the things we've done. Let's show you that. Version 2.7.5 00:02:28 which is the stable release of this change. You'll see that if we open that same Alias which we did just now, you will see it looks like this now(see video). You have a sub-form, having those values in a sub-form layout. You have a lot of new information. It also have the Database in its own tab. The Type Info is still available and you can still come and 00:02:58 review. The reality is the new option still gives you the ability to select, other on add of those fields which are not already on the page. You could still say I want to add size. We still load the description of the field on the page in the default value, which you can then change. Except when it tells you that it must be text. We have not yet 00:03:31 blocked this field from being changed or being removed, though it's mandatory. There's still a level of caution required, you could still break it although, no you can't really break it whatever is mandatory. If you do leave it out on compiling, the component. We will detect that it's mandatory. If you didn't add a value, It will fall back to its default value. 00:03:59 That's how it currently behaves. I wouldn't develop it on that way, best practice is to put in the value and make sure that is correct. That's the new Field area. We've put a lot of work into this and there has been some hiccups and 00:04:23 bugs which we have ironed out the predominantly all those we know about. We also added this new option, we haven't fully release some of the features but there is this option which is going to separate if you use the custom Field currently. It adds the PHP in the rows which 00:04:50 is a little tedious if you want to change this to keep track of the open braces, and all that in this way is little challenging.

New Implemetation For Custom Fields and Custom User

00:05:00

What we did and I can show you a little peek of that. It will be in version 2.7.6. If you have watched this video after those releases you possibly already have it. You click on New, this is New implementation for the Custom Fields and also for Custom user. You click on it, it will take the PHP and adds it to it's own little text area. Now you can easily follow and adapt the getOptions method PHP values. That's 00:05:40 quite more convenient I suppose then using one line at a time. If we look at the user, you have two fields then, one for he getExclude method and one for the getGroup method. They are also immediately available to you.

Advantage - Extra Properties Options - Listclass Option

00:06:05

The other advantage with this implementation is, we have this new Extra properties option which has been available in JCB for some time. Many of you may not know that it exists. There is what we call listclass. If you want to add a class like a CSS class value to the field when it appears in the list area. 00:06:29 Let me show you this area(see video), this is the list area. Well any of the views where you see a list of items and you want this specific value to have a specific CSS class value. Because maybe you want to style it somewhat different. Then you have this option to use. All you need to do is 00:06:53 click listclass and you add there my-class-dean. Whatever you want to call it. It will add that the class to the 00:07:15 field in the list area which is quite stunning.

Escape Option

00:07:19

There is also the escape Option. If you escape a value, all the values are escaped by default. If you want a value not to be escaped because you are going to have values in it, which if it's escaped, it gets stripped like a span tag and stuff like that. You could say false.

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and then the specific fields That what I say escaped I mean in the list area again This area When there is a list value Then this is a being escaped at the moment And if you don't want that done Then you add this false escaped 00:08:06 The other option which is also available here is the display option We'll still add some more documentation to this But basically it's about when the field gets displayed In a config You know your it's component Has a let me see here Got this options area right and you can actually add Fields to that option area And when a field is added to the option area It it has implementation structures you could have it show in the menu you could have it show in various 00:08:43 Places. I'll make a Tutorial About this specifically But just to show you quickly that that is also actually available here And then last but not least validate Not all Fields have the property To validate the value But here is the validation rules And you can 00:09:06 Basically Add a validation to this field If that property is not available in the field type which you have selected now If it is we would suggest you add it the properties here at the top And it actually says that if you have a validation set as a field property this extra property will not be needed Because you can just use that one 00:09:33 Ok so that's just a quick demonstration really Of the new field area and We trust that it will Be as easy and as comfortable as we hoped It would be that the Strange would Will not frustrate you but actually be great Because of the reason that for example One of the Sort of unforeseen 00:10:00 Outcomes Is if you have a field like this which already has all it's values And you thinking on changing it And you say, let me just check How will text look You can change it and it really adds all your text value here with its defaults And if you say no I wanna go back You can actually just click back And lo and behold your old values 00:10:25 Are again added to the page The values that were there originally And that is even true if you were to remove a specific Property Then wanna add it back It actually adds the Original value back Which was What we intended because By accident 00:10:48 You might remove it and wanna just put it back and it should be as easy as that You could obviously still go to Type info to see What what could be the The actual values Default values And adapt them So it's not like you don't have access to the default values it's just that we want to 00:11:10 Recover your Current saved value for you And then whenever you add another field which isn't already here This drop down list only shows the fields That are not already on the page So you won't end up adding fields properties the second time And yes so now it's become much more easier I suppose To build fields Based on it's Properties 00:11:39 As before You really had to Navigate Through Some of the complexities Of dealing with an XML Set of values Which maybe some of you don't even know exactly what's going on here And those of you that do I mean It's it's not like you're losing any advantage with the new implementation 00:12:02 You still targeting that value with any value want And it's still as easy as clicking a plus and selecting a value and adding it And so I I do hope that all of you will be as excited about this change As we are . We are now at the point where Making JCB easy-to-use is also a priority K well thanks for watching