CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ploneploneformgen
rain2o
rain2o

Reputation: 498

Plone schema extender and custom content types

Is it possible to create an extender of a content type (just adding a couple new fields) that is also accepted by any custom content types using the original type's schema?

I am working on an idea I had for a new feature on PloneFormGen. I originally was going to fork and modify the core product, but figured it would be more acceptable to create a separate add-on that extends PFG. So, I started creating my extender.py and all the necessary bits with it to extend PloneFormGen Form Folder.

However, our company has a custom content type that is an extension of the form folder. That got me thinking instead of just accounting for the standard Form Folder, could I either account for all types using form folder as a base, or provide a control panel where the site admins can specify the types for the extender to apply to?

Or, is there a better way to create our custom types so it not only grabs the core schema, but any extenders for it as well?

To explain in more detail what I am adding, it is not a field, or an action adapter. Basically, it is a new feature called Skip Logic. It provides the ability to hide/display fields based on values of other fields live using jQuery. As opposed to creating custom JS overrides for each form, this allows a content editor, or whoever builds the forms, to control this functionality with no code. There is a JS file that is loaded, and it uses a JSON string to determine the hide/show functionality. I created a form template that can be used to manage this which pulls in all available form fields to choose from.

My idea for implementation was to add two new catalog indexes to the PFG form. One is a boolean which toggles skip logic enabled/disabled. The other is a string which holds the JSON string, which is created by using the form UI (think like a new tab similar to QuickEdit).

If anyone has a better solution for how to implement, I am all ears. Either modifying the core product, or extending it were the only two I could think of.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 222

Answers (1)

Ulrich Schwarz
Ulrich Schwarz

Reputation: 7727

SchemaExtenders adapt an interface and not the class itself, so for your simple "extending FormFolder" example, you shouldn't need to do anything special. You can even adapt to a marker interface that doesn't do anything useful by itself and make classes implement that interface "externally" (just excerpts from local code here):

class IIllustratableContent(Interface):
    """This content has an image reference it sometimes might use"""

class IllustratableExtender(object):
    adapts(IIllustratableContent)
    implements(
        ISchemaExtender,
        IBrowserLayerAwareExtender,
        )

    # do stuff

and configure.zcml:

  <adapter
     name="illustratedContent"
     factory=".illustratedContent.IllustratableExtender"
     provides="archetypes.schemaextender.interfaces.ISchemaExtender"
     />

  <five:implements
     class="Products.ATContentTypes.content.document.ATDocument"
     interface=".illustratedContent.IIllustratableContent"
     /> <!-- and for some other classes, too -->

Upvotes: 1

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