[plug] Programming Rut

[Onno Benschop]

On Wed, 2004-02-18 at 11:59, Leon Brooks wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Feb 2004 17:43, Onno Benschop wrote:
> > Any one got any suggestions they'd like to make?
> 
> You've given us *zero* specifications. Put the problem up somewhere and 
> post a link to it.

No link, it's not live anywhere, besides, it was my intention to not
actually ask for programming help as such, more of an approach to
getting out of the rut.

However a few have asked about the specifics of the actual problem.

*Very* briefly:

Website, uses templates to build a page. A page is stored as field
elements in a table. Each element is drawn according to a template, they
are combined into sections, also drawn as a template, then combined into
a page, also drawn as a template.

This all works fine.

I need to implement a way to have one page query another page.

Example: Page exists in one location and needs to show results from
another location - for example the search page.

This needs to be implemented at one or more of the following levels:

As a user-input element during data entry.
As a code block during template building.
As a template during drawing.

Catch:
The elements are only aware of themselves. During template building or
drawing you also have access to the page identifier of the current page.

Example implementation:
During user input, identify (using a pop-up) which field needs to be
looked up. During template building, look up the values, then during
drawing, draw the results.

Sounds simple?

Except that everything is dynamic - the source field, the target field,
the value, the templates, the code and the results.

I can hard-code it for a specific implementation for xyz combination of
fields, but as soon as the administrator changes something, they need to
be able to link this back to active - better yet, it should not be
hard-coded at all and it just still works.

Again, I'm not looking for a solution as such, I'm more looking to hear
from others how they would go about getting out of the "loop"...

(Eg. Outside the box)


Onno Benschop 

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