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[drupal-devel] [SimpleTest] preparing to test xxxxx_access hook
by Kuba Zygmunt 19 Jun '05

19 Jun '05

Hi, After reading once more time, from Drupal.org site : Deliverables * Build a few tests which exercise Drupal's access control mechanism. In particular, the user_access() function. Assure that the right page is shown when denied access. I was thinking how to test Drupal. I've found two ways: One -> testing user_access function, by starting xxx_access (for ex. story_access) function in Drupal test unit. Second -> testing web response on specific request, in this way, I will have to simulate browser. Yesterday night I focused on story_access function. I write simple test which needs to be improved: function testStoryAccess() { global $user; $tempUser = $user; // store global variable in a templ $op = 'create'; unset($user); // or $user =""; to delete global variable; $user->uid = 2; // $user_id $node->uid = 2; // $node_id $result = story_access($op, $node ); $this->assertTrue($result, 'Bad access hook'); // przywroc usera $user = $tempUser; // restore global variable, } so I can change $user->uid, and $node->uid, and $op (create, edit etc) to test behavior of story_access(), I can also put it in the loop to test all uids existing in our installation. But it isn't necessary, I think. Maybe the solution is to test all uid which belong to different roles. I can obtain from database uid and the roles assigned to them, them check what permission they have ( in the table {permission} ) and finally build right test using assertTrue or assertFalse for example if in the role doesn't exist right perm then will be assertFalse ) Do you think, is it a good idea ? (in shortly) 1. get uid of users with different roles, 2. check perm string for each role. 3. build test ( False or True ) 4. test all cases in the loop Kuba Zygmunt

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[drupal-devel] [bug] if postgresql function
by Dries 19 Jun '05

19 Jun '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/23499 Project: Drupal Version: 4.6.0 Component: forum.module Category: bug reports Priority: normal Assigned to: patrickslee Reported by: cchamilt Updated by: Dries Status: patch Just so you know: I'm not committing this patch yet because one user commented that it didn't work. Waiting for a follow-up from the PostgreSQL front. Dries Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 24, 2005 - 06:32 : cchamilt Postgresql function "if" is defined to return a boolean value, yet forum requests an integer - last_comment_uid. user error: query: SELECT n.nid, l.last_comment_timestamp, IF(l.last_comment_uid, cu.name, l.last_comment_name) as last_comment_name, l.last_comment_uid FROM node n, node_comment_statistics l /*! USE INDEX (node_comment_timestamp) */, users cu, term_node r WHERE n.nid = r.nid AND r.tid = 1 AND n.status = 1 AND n.type = 'forum' AND l.last_comment_uid = cu.uid AND n.nid = l.nid ORDER BY l.last_comment_timestamp DESC LIMIT 1 OFFSET 0 in /var/www/hosts/www.ambigc.com/htdocs/includes/database.pgsql.inc on line 62. warning: pg_query() [function.pg-query]: Query failed: ERROR: function if(integer, character varying, character varying) does not exist HINT: No function matches the given name and argument types. You may need to add explicit type casts. in /var/www/hosts/www.ambigc.com/htdocs/includes/database.pgsql.inc on line 45. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 25, 2005 - 00:07 : patrickslee Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/forum.module_3.patch (2.69 KB) I have also encountered this bug and made a possible patch by replacing IF statements to CASE. A patch file is attached. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 25, 2005 - 00:28 : adrian There is an IF function defined in the database.pgsql function. On what page is this happening, as what might be happening is that the type isn't being picked up correctly. It's defined as IF(anyelement, anyelement, text) returns anyelement. IIRC. What I have seen happen is that it wants the text field to return integer, or vice versa. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 25, 2005 - 00:32 : patrickslee I found the definition in database.pgsql. It is like this: CREATE FUNCTION "if"(boolean, anyelement, anyelement) RETURNS anyelement AS ' SELECT CASE WHEN $1 THEN $2 ELSE $3 END; ' LANGUAGE 'sql'; So it is actually wanting boolean. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 25, 2005 - 00:43 : patrickslee So my patch will work, and we can make it easier by replacing the IF function to: IF(l.last_comment_uid 0 AND l.last_comment_uid NULL, cu.name, l.last_comment_name) BTW there is another place in forum.module use IF like this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 25, 2005 - 00:45 : patrickslee Oops... my <>s are stolen. IF(l.last_comment_uid <> 0 AND l.last_comment_uid <> NULL, cu.name, l.last_comment_name) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 25, 2005 - 07:20 : cchamilt Yes that line works great. Thanks for your help! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 25, 2005 - 07:52 : patrickslee This patch shows another problem. The last post user will always show "Anonymous" or whatever you defined. Looking for solution... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 25, 2005 - 08:00 : patrickslee Use this line instead: IF(l.last_comment_uid <> 0 AND l.last_comment_uid <> NULL, cu.name, l.last_comment_name) Don't forget there are two places in forum.module need to be changed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 25, 2005 - 08:10 : patrickslee Oh what have I done! I changed nothing! IF(l.last_comment_uid <> 0 AND l.last_comment_uid IS NOT NULL, cu.name, l.last_comment_name) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 25, 2005 - 12:12 : adrian perhaps we could also just add more wrapper functions for the specific types ? create or replace function IF (integer, anyelement, anyelement) returns anyelement as ' SELECT if (($1 0) AND NOT nullvalue($1), $2, $3); ' LANGUAGE 'sql'; Or something. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 25, 2005 - 12:41 : plj '' was missing. So what adrian actually means is this: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION IF (integer, anyelement, anyelement) RETURNS anyelement AS ' SELECT if (($1 <> 0) AND NOT nullvalue($1), $2, $3); ' LANGUAGE 'sql'; I applied that and now forums work -- no module patches. PostgreSQL 7.4.7. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 25, 2005 - 12:45 : plj Sheesh. I meant that '<>' was missing. Gotta learn to use that preview button... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 25, 2005 - 23:53 : patrickslee Is nullvalue() a function? I cannot find it in neither postgres manual nor mysql manual. Use "IS NOT NULL" would be better as it is more standard-compatible. SO we have this: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION IF (integer, anyelement, anyelement) RETURNS anyelement AS ' SELECT IF(($1 <> 0) AND $1 IS NOT NULL, $2, $3); ' LANGUAGE 'sql'; Looks we have a satisfying fix here. Is this fix going to be committed in CVS for next release? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 26, 2005 - 02:26 : adrian hostmaster=# \df nullvalue List of functions Result data type | Schema | Name | Argument data types ------------------+------------+-----------+--------------------- boolean | pg_catalog | nullvalue | "any" But it doesn't matter to me =) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 26, 2005 - 21:21 : Dries Can you guys provide a patch? I don't have a PostgreSQL setup to test it against. Will commit to DRUPAL-4-6 and HEAD. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 26, 2005 - 22:29 : patrickslee Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/database.pgsql_3.patch (363 bytes) Here you have it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 15, 2005 - 12:18 : igrcic Dont know about you guys but that patch doesnt work for me in drupal 4.6.1!? Im using PostgreSQL. Instead im using following function that works just fine if(integer,text,text) BEGIN IF $1 THEN RETURN $2; END IF; IF NOT $1 THEN RETURN $3; END IF; END;

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[drupal-devel] [bug] Zebra stripe table CSS class names are badly chosen
by Thox 19 Jun '05

19 Jun '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/25067 Project: Drupal Version: 4.6.0 Component: base system Category: bug reports Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: Thox Updated by: Thox Status: patch Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/zebra-classnames.patch (1.41 KB) The CSS class names chosen for table rows are badly chosen: "light" and "dark". Since CSS could be used to make the "dark" rows light and the "light" rows dark, the names are wrong. The attached patch changes "light" and "dark" to "odd" and "even". In the future, all class names should describe /why/ an element is styled differently, not /how/ it is to be styled. e.g. "Red" is a bad class name, "important" is far better. Thox

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[drupal-devel] [bug] Wrong Login Error
by Dries 19 Jun '05

19 Jun '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/3962 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: user system Category: bug reports Priority: minor Assigned to: deekayen Reported by: dziemecki Updated by: Dries Status: patch I think this patch makes sense, however the difference between 'the name X has been denied access' and 'the name X has been blocked' is too subtle for the average Drupal user/administrator to grasp. I'd like to have us think about rewording the error messages so they are somewhat more descriptive to administrators without exposing internal/technical detail to the user. How about writing 'the name X is a reserved user name' for the former, and 'the user with name X is no longer allowed access' for the latter? (One could argue we need the drupal_deny() check at login time.) Dries Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 6, 2003 - 05:01 : dziemecki When a new user logs on after they're ID and password were sent to them, but before their account was "unblocked", they get the follwoing error: "Sorry. Unrecognized username or password. Have you forgotten your password?" That may or may not count as a bug, but it not entirely accurate, and might be a little confusing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 14, 2005 - 11:19 : deekayen I don't mind assigning this one to myself, but I'm not familiar enough with the function of the access table to complete the patch. Should blocked users be entered into the access table? Right now, user.module has a drupal_deny check with the correct error message, but it doesn't get displayed because the only place a person gets blocked is in the users table. To be more normalized, I'd just leave the block in the users table, but does someone intend to move the user block to the access table? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 16, 2005 - 05:37 : deekayen Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/blockedloginmessage.patch (1.26 KB) Right now when users are blocked, they're not added to the access table, so this patch just checks the users table for blocked logins. The check in user.module's user_login() should work now and give the correct error message that was there all along. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 16, 2005 - 05:45 : deekayen Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/removeactivereset.patch (882 bytes) This patch goes with the previous one. Without it, when you edit a blocked user to make them active again, they remain blocked and the edit screen shows an error message about the user being blocked. I don't really know if that's the intended behavior to have blocks be permanent, but permanent blocks don't seem right to me. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 16, 2005 - 17:04 : moshe weitzman I'm not so sure about this one. We should continue to distinguish between a 'user block' and a 'host ban'. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 16, 2005 - 17:12 : killes(a)www.drop.org I agree with Moshe. I think we should test whether a user hasn't logged in before and then give a different message then when he got blocked later. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 17, 2005 - 08:37 : deekayen Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/blockeduser.diff (1.29 KB) Just your comments made me see where I went wrong with the previous patches. I'd never used the access control rules before, so I thought blocked user == access controlled username. As far as I could tell, the only place to where a blocked username check was needed is at login. This patch adds a user_blocked() to just user.module and has a separate blocked error message from the access check. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 17, 2005 - 08:46 : deekayen Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/blockeduser_0.diff (1.29 KB) I'm not used to the Drupal bracket formatting, yet. This is a spacing revision.

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[drupal-devel] [feature] Enable multiple block regions (not just "left" and "right" sidebars)
by Dries 19 Jun '05

19 Jun '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/16216 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: block.module Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: paragkenia Updated by: Dries Status: patch Ber: I was talking about chx's latest changes, not the block system in general. Dries Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 26, 2005 - 12:27 : paragkenia I read the comparision discussion between *Drupal* and *Mambo*. In several messages it was outlined that Drupal can place blocks only in right and left and not flexible to put them on anywhere where one want. It will be great if this can be changed in upcoming versions. I am no pro at PHP, so don't know how much time this task will take, but I think it is very important. parag ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 15, 2005 - 03:44 : nedjo This issue was apparently partially addressed in issue http://drupal.org/node/19694 [1]. [1] http://drupal.org/node/19694 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 02:24 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block-dynamic-regions.patch (8.17 KB) This much-requested functionality - to have the ability to place blocks in more than the two predefined regions - was partially addressed in issue http://drupal.org/node/19694. [2]. But "blocks" are still limited to the "left" and "right" sidebars (hard-coded in block.module). This patch is a first step designed to enable multiple (eventually, admin-definable) regions for blocks. I've moved the existing "left" and "right" block regions to a 'region' table (with ids of 0 and 1, as currently used in themes). Then all references to the regions are drawn dynamically from the table. This way, if further records are added, they will appear in the list of available regions for block placement. Doing this actually reduces some duplicated code, since it's no longer necessary to repeat code blocks for each of "left" and "right". As it stands, the patch doesn't add any new functionality--but I don't think it breaks anything either. New functionality would need (a) new regions defined, and (b) changes to themes. A simple first step might be, e.g., to add a "footer" region and then add a call in the footer generation to append any blocks assigned to the footer region there. I'm setting this to patch, but I'm aware that it needs some discussion and refining before it'll be ready to apply. [2] http://drupal.org/node/19694. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 03:05 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block_regions.png (5.65 KB) Here's a screenshot showing the block admin page, with drop-downs for region placement (the options are dynamically generated based on defined regions). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 04:57 : adrian The biggest problem with this is that you can have multiple themes, and each of these themes can have different regions available. Also, the method of defining which regions are available needs to be standardised. Some of the work that me and Vlado are working on for the install system would go towards solving that problem (ie: meta information for modules, themes and styles). This has been discussed to death, but the general consensus has been that we _want_ to do this, but we need to solve a few other problems properly first, the most pertinent being the interface issue. Chris (factoryjoe) recently did a whole mess of workflows for something related to this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 06:09 : syscrusher The first paragraph of adrian [3]'s post is a point that occurred to me also, as I read this thread. One suggestion would be to separate the definition and configuration of blocks, on one hand, from the placement of those blocks, on the other hand. In other words, Drupal core provides a mechanism defining what blocks exist, which of these are on by default or off by default and user-selectable vs. which are forced on for all users, and the configuration (if applicable) of specialized blocks defined by particular modules. Each theme provides a standard hook function that returns an array of region names and help/description text, e.g., array('left'=>t('This vertical region is left of the main content area'), 'right'=>t('This vertical region is right of the main content area'), 'footer'=>t('The footer is below the left, right, and main content areas of the page')). The theme part of Drupal core (i.e., theme.module itself, not the individual themes) provides a standard UI that is displayed within config of *each theme* (but is one physical code base within theme.module) that allows the administrator to map blocks defined by Drupal core into regions defined by the theme, and storing that mapping as an theme-to-block_ID-to-region_ID (with weight) table in the database. From there, the actual page rendering is similar to what's being done now, but there is more of it. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the key to solving this problem is breaking it along its degrees of orthogonality, and there are three -- two in Drupal core and one in the individual theme. Scott [3] http://drupal.org//user/1517 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 09:14 : Dries Scott, is right. The theme should export its available regions. Then the administrator's task is to assign blocks to regions (not to setup regions). A theme could have configurable regions, but that internal to the theme. To me, the real challenge is the UI and the interaction design. Configuring blocks could easily become a real pain (while most themes continue to use 'left' and 'right'.) Of course, we can implement all the functionality, default everything to 'left' and 'right', and worry about the UI later. This should be fairly straightforward to implement and nedjo's patch looks like a first step in the right direction. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 23:09 : nedjo I agree with the suggested approach of themes registering their regions. I'd see this happening when a particular theme is activiated (or upgraded). Regions would be an array of names (e.g., 'left', 'right', 'footer'). New records would be created in the region table only for region names not previously registered. Some areas I'm not clear on, or that need further work: * Table naming Should a new table be 'region' or 'regions' (I've used 'region')? I don't see a convention among existing table names, some of which are singular and others plural. * Default values I've kept the existing '0' and '1' ids for regions (left and right, respectively), for backward compatibility. But this means we can't use autoincrement for the region id (rid), since autoincrements seem to begin with 1. Likely we should change to autogenerated ids. * Initial records Using the INSERT INTO statements as I've done for the initial region entries is probably counterproductive, since sooner or later they'll have to be dynamically generated. I was hoping this could be a preliminary patch, with the main work coming later, but likely we need to solve region registration by themes before this patch is applied. I don't have a good idea of how region registration by themes would be implemented (a hook on theme activation?), and invite suggestions or implementations. * Theme system changes Besides region registration, the other change I'm seeing that would be needed in the theme system is loading blocks by region name, rather than region id. This is because the ids currently used ('0' and '1') in theory might be diffferent on a particular install. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 23:18 : syscrusher Instead of having themes "register" their regions, why not just add a theme API hook called them_regions() that returns an associative array of $region_name=>t($region_helptext)? This would be in keeping with other similar API functions, such as those that return what permissions apply to a module or what node types are defined by a module. Most themes are going to define only a small number of regions (two being the typical case now, but I could see five or six in a complex theme), so returning a constant array will be faster than querying SQL to obtain an array of rows. There could be (optionally, at the discretion of whoever builds this thing) another API hook like theme_region_properties($region_name) that returns an associative array with detailed info for a given region, such as extended help text with recommended usage instructions for the region. Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 23:19 : syscrusher s/them_regions/theme_regions/g ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 00:47 : adrian Because. The most common 'theme' is a phptemplate theme. And there needs to be a generic method for specifying the regions available, in a non hook_function format.. Themes get their names from the directory in which they are contained.. when copying the theme to another directory, there must be _no_ modifications necessary to allow normal usage. This is one of the tenets of the new template system I designed. You would need a standard way to define meta-information for themes, that does not need to be modified when copied to a new directory. We are working on this in the install system work, as you need a way external of Drupal to define the module dependencies and some other things. My approach would be to add a theme.dsc text file to the directory, which would allow you to specify meta-information. For instance : ---- regions: left, right, footer, center, mountie author: Johnny McAngstyPants ---- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 04:00 : syscrusher Adrian wrote: " Themes get their names from the directory in which they are contained.. when copying the theme to another directory, there must be _no_ modifications necessary to allow normal usage. This is one of the tenets of the new template system I designed. " A very good point. But region names don't have to be unique across different themes, so my hook function wouldn't have to be modified. The suggestion I made for the mapping metadata was three factors: theme ID or name, region ID or name, and block ID (plus one non-key weight value to order the blocks within a region, but this is not relevant here). I'm not familiar enough with PHP template to be able to respond to your comments on that one, so if you say it's not feasible to work with my schema, then I'll take your word for it. :-) Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 04:03 : syscrusher Oh, wait.....I see now what you mean! It's not the output of the function that is the problem, but the *name* of the function. Never mind. I concede your point. Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 09:44 : Jaza I'm probably jumping ahead a bit here... but something that this patch will have to eventually account for, is how to allow regions to be defined as inline. Allowing a theme to define a region's position as being anywhere on the edge of the page (i.e. top, left, right, bottom, corners, etc) is relatively easy. But what about having a region that's in the middle of a node's body, or somewhere else that's not the edge of the page? What I'm thinking of, is eventually allowing the custom region system to integrate with the CCK. Like I said, I admit that I'm jumping ahead into the future - the CCK still has a long way to go before it's ready. But ultimately, it would be cool if a theme could define a region as being after, say, the "rating" field in nodes of type "movie review". This would make the region (and the blocks in it) truly inline and in context with the actual content of the node. This would be a huge step forward compared to the current block system, which doesn't allow you to mix the presentation of blocks and nodes at all. In Drupal ATM, blocks and "the rest of the page" are totally separate, and really you have no choice but to display them as such. The result of this is that information in blocks that really should be displayed as part of a node, gets literally "pushed to the side", and always seems secondary to the actual content. Often the block has content that is just as important as the content of the node itself. Another option (of less merit, IMO - because of the extra maintenance work, and lack of enforced consistency) would be to have a region filter. You could then choose where to place an inline region on a per-node basis, by entering text such as [region:2] (example based on image_filter syntax) into the node body. Anyway, just thought I'd throw that idea into the open. I don't expect it will be implemented any time soon, but it's something to think about. Jeremy ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 10:54 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-1.png (1.29 KB) Imo the 'regions' are more than you guys name here.. FOr example I attached 2 screens which only shows you the regions.. What I think is that it should always be possible to have free names for the regions. No matter if i call - the region where my content appears in - 'content' or 'site items'.. See attached screens.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 10:56 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-2.png (1.39 KB) And the second... See these links: - http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-1.png - http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-2.png ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 17:22 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block-dynamic-regions2.patch (13.39 KB) Here's a revised patch implementing some of the ideas so far. I've used the theme engine - rather than individual themes - to generate the list of available regions. I know this isn't ideal, but e.g. for xtemplate it's at present the only option--no logic is possible in the individual theme. region is changed to a varchar field from the current tinyint. I've roughed in several regions--really just for demo purposes. More thought and work would be needed to refine them (e.g., styling, etc.). But this maybe moves the conversation forward. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 23:26 : Dries This patch enables different regions to be used. That is a good thing. The next question is: should we take into account that different themes could assign blocks to different regions? Lots of problems would be solved if (i) there could only be one active theme on a website or (ii) if all themes would have a common set of regions. (This "let users select their own theme"-thing is a left-over from the early days, except for WAP stuff maybe.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 23:37 : killes(a)www.drop.org Giving up multiple theme support would be a great thing. People could still select from multiple style sheets. WAP shoud not be a user preference setting, but automatically detected and redirected to a special site with a WAP theme. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 23:48 : adrian You would then lose the ability to make a special front page theme for use with the sections module, for instance. Also, currently styles exist in the same namespace as themes, and we would have to make more a distinction of styles vs templates (or themes), but I do think this could help simplify things. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 18:54 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block-dynamic-regions3.patch (15.69 KB) The main issue raised, if I'm understanding well: if a theme or theme engine is present that offers regions other than those available in the default theme, any blocks assigned to those regions will be invisible to most users. Here's a revised patch addressing the concern. I've added a test for each region to see whether it's also available in the current default theme. (Actually, I'm realizing as I write this, I've used the theme engine--so it would need to be updated to test first if an engine is being used.) In any case, any regions not available by default are starred, and a message text appears (only if necessary). If there's support for the approach, I'd be happy to finish the patch. Remaining work: * extend to work with non-engine themes * finalize base set of regions to implement * implement common region set in all core themes (for now I've only done xtemplate) * work on CSS display (how blocks in each region should look) This last point I'm not too confident on and would look for help/suggestions. Screenshot to come. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 18:56 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block_regions_message.png (12.34 KB) Screenshot showing starring of non-default regions plus message. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 19:19 : killes(a)www.drop.org I like that approach. +1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 19:23 : resmini My two cents. If this has to be done (and it should), better get rid of spatial definitions for areas such as left, right, top, bottom, etc. Use semantic names related to content and let the theme take care of their positioning interely. Also note that there in an ongoing debate in IA trying to build up a standard naming convention for page regions in a way that is semantically (and logically) correct. Just for the sake of it, you can check http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/archives/whats_in_a_name.html http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/archives/whats_in_a_name_pt2.html with follow-ups, including Eric Meyer's. There are more substantial contributes in the AIfIA web site, but I can't seem to find them now. I'll post a link or an abstract if I manage to. -- vector at exea dot it ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 20:15 : nedjo Good points, useful references. The default regions I'm thinking of are: 'banner' => t('banner'), 'left' => t('left sidebar'), 'right' => t('right sidebar'), 'body_top' => t('body top'), 'body_bottom' => t('body bottom'), 'footer' => t('footer') Perhaps "body" would be better as "content"? It would be easy enough to add in more regions, e.g., within the content (after title, after help, etc.) One issue is that many of these regions will already have rendered content. Should the blocks come before or after that other content? I've assumed after for banner and footer, while giving both options in body. In any case, refinements or suggestions would be great. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 20:56 : resmini Well, 'banner' => t('banner'), 'left' => t('left sidebar'), 'right' => t('right sidebar'), 'body_top' => t('body top'), 'body_bottom' => t('body bottom'), 'footer' => t('footer') The classic (as far as classic goes for something Web related) scheme comprises 5 spatial regions, much like stefan's http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-1.png with a left area mirroring the one called 'blocks'. Call them top, left, center, right, bottom. Variants usually exclude one or more of these, layout-wise. If we talk content (semantic) instead, things get a bit more complicated, as these spatial regions normally include more than one content-area. The top, for example, could include ad banners and the site's header, or the main menu. But these merge seamlessly with CSS definitions, which are definitely something that should get properly standardized (most of the errors / inconsistencies I'm encountering with Drupal today are related to this), but this is out of scope in this thread. What I somewhat object to the definitions above is that it mixes the two approaches. 'banner' is not spatial, is content, as it is the distinction between body top and bottom. If 'banner' goes there, it is 'top', whatever that might be. I designed a couple of web sites which had headers/logos/banners at the bottom of the page, and I'm not exactly the wildest designer you'll probably meet. And if we include body_top and _bottom, we should also add 'navigation', or 'menu' and some other content-related semantic region (impressum, or company_data, or whatever). I suggest that either we go along 'top' => t('banner'), 'left' => t('left sidebar'), 'center' => t('body'), 'right' => t('right sidebar'), 'bottom' => t('footer') or we dedicate some time to detailing what could possibly fit there semantically, which is perfectly possible without limiting design freedom or whatever, since the vocabulary is not infinite, but not something you do out of the blue. Please note that I understand t('something') to be an example, since such a layout only defines regions on the page, not semantic regions. My main content could fit nicely in the bottom region. As for the names for the regions, they are not important, as much as they are coherent and enforced. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 23:16 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions-final.png (2.39 KB) Maybe something like this??? But, I have to say that I _really_ liked the solution to split the 'content'-region into the 'content' and 'beneath content'.. I love that! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 00:20 : resmini Stefan, yes. That's basically what you can build if you stick with spatial, and this layout can generate quite an amount of (sane) layout variations even if you interpret it strictly (suppose a default) as <div id="header"> </div> <div id="left-bar"> </div> <div id="content"> </div> <div id="right-bar"> </div> <div id="footer"> </div> What you can do with this is left basically to the theme designers and their use of CSS, CSS-P or tables (brrr), but this could be an easy and proper way to identify macro-regions in which more accurate positioning happens at a more specific level. I'm all in favour of subsequent identification of sub-areas (top and bottom in body), but I don't think it would be a good idea to mix the different approaches I mentioned in my previous post. A site with lots of things going on or which is not just blogging surely has the need to use its content area in a wiser manner than just putting there 'content', the number of modules doing precisely this is more than proof, but that falls more in a 'Drupal definitive guide to semantics', in which CSS selectors are used or suggested strategically for such a scope. >From this point of view and for the sake of this thread, any unique area / div (#name) could (should?) be a target for blocks, and this in my opinion (*) would be the perfect solution, but I do not know if and how this is even remotely possible in the current Drupal. (*) It's quite late, local time, and it was a looong working day. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 00:38 : resmini Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions-final-variation.png (1.9 KB) Just to be clear, I add a variation of stefan's scheme that shows how this is *not* by any means positional, but spatial, or better relational. Use your CSS imagination to take out regions, reduce them to empty containers, enlarge them, make them taller, shorter, whatever. 5 regions, do what you like. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 00:44 : resmini Sorry, I forgot. And this is also why I'm not too keen on calling anything 'content'. If I enlarge my right region enough, why not put my content there? Shouldn't this be a theme-level concern? It's nothing serious, but if my center area is called 'center' (or something similar and more sexy), I won't confuse anybody. This is left, center, right: do with them what you prefer. Content in the bottom? Show me. If I call something 'content', I'm more than suggesting that content goes there, and only there. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 10:17 : stefan nagtegaal Resmini, maybe it is only me but I think that you are making a mistake in your way of thinking.. I get the feeling that you're mixing the 'regions' and 'divs'.. the 'regioins' should have meaningfull sentences, but the divs shouldn'thave.. As an example: $region_name => $content_body here we go: 'header' => $logo 'left sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'left') 'right sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'right') 'content' => $content 'footer' => $footer. So, $region_name does not have to be equal to the id or class of the divs.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 11:27 : resmini Stefan, >So, $region_name does not have to be equal to the id or class of the divs.. Yes, absolutely. I probably didn't make myself very clear: what I'm trying to point out is that in 'header' => $logo 'left sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'left') 'right sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'right') 'content' => $content 'footer' => $footer. there is no reason at all to call 'content' the region that holds $content. nedjo asked in #24 'body_top' => t('body top'), 'body_bottom' => t('body bottom'), if /Perhaps "body" would be better as "content"?/ and all my reasoning is simply that no, that is not content, or it shouldn't be (or better: it may happen that main content is elsewhere). As a matter of fact, even the connotation 'sidebar' doesn't fit very well logically. To make it short: Today's method works, but has limits. Mambo, which paragkenia quotes at the beginning, handles more 'user regions' but in pure Mambo style conventions are so loose that they are hardly useful. If we define regions, as in nedjo's example, in my opinion these regions shouldn't imply informational layouting, only relational positioning (that is, where they stay in the browser viewport). I know it may look like overdesigning, but Drupal constantly enforces conventions and coding guidelines everywhere: this is one of the best aspects of the project and I think it should carry to the layout. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 11:32 : stefan nagtegaal While I think that 'body_*' is not as self explaining as 'content_*' I vote for using 'content_*'.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 25, 2005 - 19:48 : chx Let's get back to the code. If my understanding is correct the big discussion is about how to name potiental rectangular areas _after_ this is commited. So, first get this committed. What's need to make that happen? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 25, 2005 - 20:56 : chx I spoke with Moshe, Steven, JonBob and the result is: keys shall be numbers, and themes shall define the values. We will make region zero and one required. There will be a define('REGION_CONTENT', 0) and a define('REGION_SIDEBAR', 1); so you can have readable code still. Either wait for me to code it or feel to do it yourself, just drop me a mail via the contact form if you are doing it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 27, 2005 - 18:14 : nedjo Károly, it's great if you're willing to take on finishing this. I tried to summarize remaining work in update 20, above [4]. The numerical keys look fine to me. In terms of an initial default set of regions, one quirk is this: for now, so far as I can see (and assuming the approach I sketched in), available regions can be defined only in (a) theme engines and (b) individual themes that don't use an engine. So, for instance, an individual xtemplate based theme can't define its own custom regions; they need to be defined in the theme engine. (Unless and until the whole theme system should switch to the sort of configuration file adrian suggested above [5].) Which is to say that, under this approach, we'll be defining a set of regions for each engine, and then all themes using that engine should try to implement those regions. (Otherwise, if a site admin selects a region defined in the engine but not implemented in the default theme, the content won't appear.) Please let me know if there's anything in what I've done that isn't clear, or if you want to pass some or all of this back. Thanks! [4] http://www.drupal.org/node/16216#comment-27398 [5] http://www.drupal.org/node/16216#comment-27052 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 9, 2005 - 22:36 : chx I had a "short" discussion with the UI team leader ie. Ber Kessels. The outcoming is that we will change hook_block so that it uses callbacks a bit like menu system. Here's an example: <?php function module_block() { $items = array(); $items['module_header'] = array('callback' => 'mymodule_page', 'weight' => -50, 'region' => 'content' , 'cache' => TRUE, 'pages' => "node/*\n<front>"); return $items; } ?> Please note that we are allowing caching the themed output of each block independently. The theme system will execute hook_block as it does now and it'll execute the callbacks defined in module_block as well. Of course if the callback is cacheable and in the cache, it'll print it from cache. If it's themeable and not in the cache, it'll cache it before printing. Pages contains a string (could be PHP code!) which can be overriden in the block configuration screen. Callbacks defined in hook_menu will have lot less functionality after this, they will be used for non-themed pages mainly. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 9, 2005 - 22:45 : chx More explanation is requested for the example. module_header is the unqiue name of the block. pages define on which pages the block is visible. ('pages' in the block configuration screen.) Maybe I'll implement 'visibility' from the same screen as well. callback, weight are well known Drupal terms. cache is a boolean which defines whether given output is cacheable or not. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 9, 2005 - 22:47 : chx Ber, Dries, do not kill me! Ber chaired the usability meeting in Antwerp, that's all. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 9, 2005 - 22:52 : Bèr Kessels Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/more_regions_principle.png (123.29 KB) attached is a schematic which might clarify this a little. And I would also like to comment on me being the UI leader: I do not consider myself any leader, no ofeence, though. Just to clarify that. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 00:42 : nedjo I am not opposed to the idea of changing the _block() hook to use callbacks (I have no opinion on it, not immediately grasping the need), but this seems quite distinct from the aim of enabling multiple and extensible regions. Why can't we just move ahead with the block generalization? I suggest: * quickly implement the proposed block region generalization, using only the two existing regions (i.e., implementing them in core themes) * later worry about: - adding further regions (the details of which are best done by those primarily responsible for the particular themes) - possible changes to the _block() hook. Wouldn't this make sense? Or am I missing some pressing reason for which the block generalization has to wait? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 03:28 : killes(a)www.drop.org "Or am I missing some pressing reason for which the block generalization has to wait?" I might be missing something too, but I thought Chx was just talking about the block generalization and proposing a way to code it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 04:41 : factoryjoe I wanted to chime in with this discussion because it's an important one and has some really huge implications for Drupal moving forward. That said, I also have a day job pulling all my attention which means that the big ideas I have for this problem can't be put into a complete visual form for at least a week or more. In the meantime, I'd like to offer a few thoughts on the matter. * *Regions do not belong in themes.* Blocks were originally separate from themes for a reason. Themes should define the general look and feel of a site -- and to some extent a site's behavior. Layouts which define the spatial relationship between regions belong in some intermediary between style and content, which does not currently exist in Drupal. * I would propose that *layouts become a new kind of CCK tool.* By that I mean that they can be defined, shared and deployed very easily -- even as simply as tossing a directory of some .layout textfiles into a layouts/ directory. Note that this suggestion has nothing to do with the way CCK /might actually/ work right now; instead I'm suggesting how I would like it to work. I would like, for example, to create a CCK item like a "person" and ship it with a .layout file that carries all the semantic goodness needed to output that "person" to the screen in juicy, semantic markup... which anyone can come along and theme to their heart's content. * *Creating shareable layouts should be relatively painless.* Dashboard [6] sets the bar for easy hackability. It should be that easy to create layouts for Drupal... I can imagine creating an "iTunes layout" or an "Image Gallery" layout and so on... If we used something akin to PHPTal to develop the layouts, we could keep development fairly standard while making it possible for more folks to hack up cool and innovative layouts. * *Layouts should be extensible.. to a degree.* I see a huge problem with how this discussion has floated back and forth between semantic and spatial region naming. Because we talk about this problem in those terms, we fail to identify the real problem and opportunities presented to us. Here's the thing: when you predefine regions, you limit creativity and the ability of people to really use the system. On the other hand, when you make a system too flexibile, it quickly becomes unwieldy. In all the mockups presented above, both classes of problems would arise. Therefore we need to think about a way to stay flexibile while "taming the beast." * To that end, I suggest developing *self-contained layouts that are contextually-complete.* So for the example of the iTunes search layout... you would know before hand that you get a couple multiple select boxes that you can hook up to whatever taxonomies you want to progressively filter [nodes]. You could even change the .layout file, allowing you to theme it to your liking -- even though that would totally optional, given the layout's internal default styling. Once you've got your layout, you would go into a layout module UI [7], create a new layout [8], select the layout from a list [9] and then give it a path so you can access the layout... You would then walk through a wizard [10] that would help you populate that layout with all kinds of nice Drupally goodies... feeds, node listings, PHP code, etc. The power in this approach is multifold. For one, it snaps Drupal out of its block mentality and allows designers to really innovate with individual page designs. In fact, I've already thought out how I could reimplement Flickr using this system, combined with Drupal's native feeds, taxonomy and menu module, and I'd barely break a sweat... sort of. ;) But anyway, this is a very productive conversation to be having, but I really think that we should consider whether the old paradigm, as such, really pushes Drupal as far forward as we have the opportunity to go. [6] http://drupal.org/apple.com/macosx/theater/dashboard.html [7] http://photos4.flickr.com/6944826_90af237c99_o.png [8] http://www.factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/new.html [9] http://www.factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/new_layout.html [10] http://www.factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/testing_add.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 06:34 : chx While factoryjoe may be right, I could be right as well. Regions has definitely something to do with themes, after all it's the theme that renders the page, and it can only render regions that it knows of. So, instead of postponing this into the far future when someone comes out with a layout system, I code this now. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 07:22 : Dries The proposed 'weight', 'region' and 'pages' would be configurable, not? Are these just defaults? The 'callback' and 'cache' options are nice to have. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 07:25 : chx Yes, blocks can provide a default for everything on the block and and configuration screen. Of course, you can override these in the UI. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 11:02 : Bèr Kessels Dries: yes, the region, weight and pages will be configurable from an admin interface. What we tried to address here, is a method for developers to choose good defaults. Take for example "logo". that should be enabled by default in a regions called header, rendered on all pages, and have a very light weight. We should not force an admin to visit the blocks admin before she can see or use the logo. Chris: I do not know if you have ever tried typo3. Its concept is some form of builder system. I do not like thar, because far too complex. If we ever get sme kind of builder in core (if ever) it will require a lot of work, and even more usability research. So for now such a builder is far out of our reach. Lets aim at goals that are more realistic ;) So: it does belong in themes, its the best place that is still realistic. I do like your visions, Chris, but I hope you agree they are not realistic, yet. So, maybe you can think of a path towards your visions, ow we can reach such a builder-system, you describe? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 16:52 : factoryjoe My browser crashed before I was able to submit my followup to chx's comment... I have no problem with the current work going forward and am happy to see it happening. I know that my ideas are typically outlandlish and far off... That's the kind of design I enjoy doing! In any case, I see chx's solution being a means to an end; once we have abstracted the region code, it become much easier for me to get some help creating my vision. In the meantime, and as a demonstration of how I see this layout system working (to answer, I hope, Ber's concerns about clunkiness), I've created a workflow movie that shows off how fast you'd be able to add content to the system. Check it out: http://factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/media/layout_workflow_v1.mov Feedback appreciated. And, if you want to try the demo out yourself (it's all hardcoded, like a "movie set" for my UI), go here: http://factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 18:45 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block-dynamic-regions4.patch (13.56 KB) "I might be missing something too, but I thought Chx was just talking about the block generalization and proposing a way to code it. " Well, if I can say so respectfully, I don't think so. Not so far as I can see identifying problems with my original patch, this interesting discussion is rather addressing the (useful, but logically subsequent) question "once we have multiple regions, how should we work with them?". It's perhaps demonstrating our propensity to try to do more rather than less with a given patch--to talk for a long time when a first step solution is already in place. So here is a (yes, interim!) small, focused, and tested patch to remove the hard-coded regions. I've stripped it down so it does nothing more than (a) make block regions declared by themes rather than hard-coded and (b) implement the existing left and right regions in existing core themes. Please, try it out, I think you'll like it. I'm of the (I'm hoping not scandalous) opinion that it can be applied right away, and so clear the way for further progress. In particular, this patch leaves the adding and configuring of additional regions to theme authors/maintainers, who are best qualified for the work. "I spoke with Moshe, Steven, JonBob and the result is: keys shall be numbers, and themes shall define the values. We will make region zero and one required. " The reason I moved from numbers to strings (e.g., "left") is that a theme author defining regions has no way of knowing what regions might have already been defined, and therefore what integers might have aleady been used. It's like module and theme names--we'd have to use random numbers to avoid conflicts, so we're better off with string names. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 20:17 : Bèr Kessels nedjo, I am not a fan of your solution for blocks that dissapear. It breaks the ability to allow more themes on a site. if important blocks dont show up, your site will simply break. I would rather suggest that every theme MUST have a region called 'default'. any blocks that want to go into a non-existing region, will be placed there. We must define a standard listy of suggested region names. to avoid a wildgrowth of names. I am not sure if i like the way you do function phptemplate_regions(). these regions should be defined in the templqtes, not the engine. Otherwise all phptemplate themes will still all have two regions. Note that i did not test your patch thouroughly, just applied and looked at. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 21:38 : nedjo Thanks for your comments. I think we're getting somewhere. "I am not a fan of your solution for blocks that dissapear. It breaks the ability to allow more themes on a site. if important blocks dont show up, your site will simply break. I would rather suggest that every theme MUST have a region called 'default'. any blocks that want to go into a non-existing region, will be placed there. " Good suggestion. Having a default region for blocks to show up sounds like a valuable backup. I'm thinking we might want to have a way to designate a given region as the default, rather than having to have one named 'default'. Thoughts? "We must define a standard listy of suggested region names. to avoid a wildgrowth of names. " Sure. But the patch doesn't prevent doing that--it enables it. "I am not sure if i like the way you do function phptemplate_regions(). these regions should be defined in the templqtes, not the engine. Otherwise all phptemplate themes will still all have two regions. " Oh, I wholeheartedly agree, and I've noted the issue above. But unless we substantially rewrite the engines, some region definition is needed in the engines, as they call blocks. Should we therefore define a base set in the engine, then call a hook from the engine to add any other regions from themes based on that engine? If so, where in the theme's files should such a hook be located? And a side note. Do let's make an effort to keep our comments friendly. Taking the time to note one or two things that do work or are done well as part of a review is I believe a valuable habit. It helps to confirm what is indeed accomplished. Beyond this, it helps to maintain the idea that we are collaborating on shared goals, rather than pushing individual and competing visions, and that contributions and work are appreciated, rather than being invitations to criticism. Thanks, Nedjo ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 21:42 : chx I am implementing http://drupal.org/node/16216#comment-29282 but it takes time. regions again have names. default and sidebar regions are mandatory. This has little to do with nedjo's code much more with his idea -- I looked at the screenshot and said, OK this is great but... we'd like to have a lot more 'blocks' if this comes through, henceforth the above mentioned solution. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 22:39 : nedjo Okay, thanks for the clarification, I hadn't understood that you were taking a new approach rather than building on what I'd begun. Given that that's the case, staging as I'd suggested obviously won't work so I'm content to wait and see what you accomplish. I'd only suggest, don't feel like you need necessarily to do everything all at once. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 13, 2005 - 10:34 : Bèr Kessels Nedjo, sorry if the sound of my comment was hostile. it was never meant to be that way. I am busy, and thus did not want to comment all the things i liked about your patch, but chose to pick the much smaller amount of things I thought could use some improvement. I will try to keep in mind to be more friendly next times. Also, not all of us are as fluent in English as our native English speakers. I think its good to keep in mind that for a lot of us, communication in English is not as easy as it may seem. For me, it often requires a lot of concentration to get the subtleties right. I mean: I can type some English text, look up words in the dictionary, but to get small yet important subtleties in my texts is very hard, often. But, that all said: I liked your patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 10, 2005 - 13:08 : jakeg How far off is this from being officially released or at least usable? If its usable now, what files will I need to implement it? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 10, 2005 - 14:19 : Kobus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-3.png (2.21 KB) To add to Stefan's suggestions with the two screenshots, I modified one of them a bit, and this is how I understand Jaza's post, and yes, I agree, this would be a wonderful feature! I can't wait! Imagine how good it would look if I had a theme that has a clear white background (not visible blocks) and then these seemingly random boxes on the page, as shown in the screenshot. Especially where I can place it anywhere around the node like Jaza said with a [region:2] block etc. I say again: I can't wait! Kobus ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 10, 2005 - 15:59 : chx I need 3-4 hrs of peace to implement the callback based thing. That's a lot these days. Let's hope I'll get on it in the following days. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 19, 2005 - 00:32 : chx Here's an example again of how hook_block will look like: <?php function module_block() { $items = array(); $items['module_header'] = array('callback' => 'mymodule_function', 'callback arguments' => arg(1), 'weight' => -50, 'region' => 'content', 'cache' => TRUE, ''pages' => "node/*\n<front>"); return $items; } ?> Items are keyed by unique IDs. The template system will call module_invoke_all('block'), put the rendered HTML of the blocks into regions sorted by weight. The rendered HTML is cached if it is allowed. More keys will be introduced later, but now basically we just throw everything from block configure in here, and add callback, callback arguments, region. Node teasers or fullly rendered nodes are blocks, too. Almost everything is. So, here what happens when we are on taxonomy/term/1: taxonomy_render_nodes is called it calls block_set('node_view', $weight, $node, $teaser, $page); a few times, so a few node_view blocks will be on the page later the theme system is invoked. It will ask the block system to collect all blocks, dynamic and the static blocks as well. For all dynamic blocks we have a block defined in hook_block somewhere, like the definition above, with one exception: it will have a 'standalone' => FALSE pair, so it is not a standalone block which is automatically rendered but something that needs to explicitely requested. Also, we may define a 'suffix' => 'somefunction' pair which provides us with a cache ID suffix. Look at the code below: <?php function block_collect_blocks() { // get all block definitions $static_blocks = module_invoke_all('block'); // iterate of the dynamic blocks set on the page foreach (block_get() as $dynamic_block) { // get the block definition for the given dynamic block $static_block = $static_blocks[$dynamic_block['block']]; // merge the callback arguments from the dynamic and static. dynamic_block['callback arguments'] is always set though // may be empty if (isset($static_block['callback arguments'])) { $dynamic_block['callback arguments'] = array_merge($static_block['arguments'], $dynamic_block['callback arguments']); } // try to get a cache ID suffix $suffix = function_exists($static_block['suffix']) && call_user_func_array($static_block['suffix'], $dynamic_block['callback arguments']); // if the block is cacheable or the suffix function says that it is cacheable by setting a suffix if ($static_block['cache'] || $suffix) { // set cache ID $cid = 'block:'. $dynamic_block['block'] .':'. $suffix; // try to get the rendered HTML from cache if ($block_rendered = cache_get($cid)) { $return[$static_block['region'][$dynamic_block['weight']][] = $static_block_rendered; continue; } } // render the block $block_rendered = call_user_func_array($static_block['callback'], $dynamic_block['callback arguments']); // store the block for return $return[$static_block['region'][$dynamic_block['weight']][] = $static_block_rendered; if ($static_block['cache'] || $suffix) { // if cacheable, do it cache_set($cid, $static_block_rendered); } } foreach ($static_blocks as $key => $static_block) { // is this a stand alone block, like in Drupal 4.6? if ($static_block['standalone']) { // now, the above is repeated, save that we do not have a dynamic_block here $suffix = function_exists($static_block['suffix']) && call_user_func_array($static_block['suffix'], $static_block['callback arguments']); if ($static_block['cache'] || $suffix) { $cid = "block:$key:$suffix"; if ($block_rendered = cache_get($cid)) { $return[$static_block['region'][$static_block['weight']][] = $static_block_rendered; continue; } } $block_rendered = call_user_func_array($static_block['callback'], $static_block['callback arguments']); $return[$static_block['region']][$static_block['weight']][] = $static_block_rendered; if ($static_block['cache'] || $suffix) { cache_set($cid, $static_block_rendered); } } } } function block_set() { static $blocks; $args = func_get_args(); if (count($args)) { $callback = array_shift($args); $weight = array_shift($args); $blocks[] = array('block' => $function, 'weight' => $weight, 'callback arguments' => $args); } return $blocks; } function block_get() { return block_set(); } ?> When to expire the block cache? Never. If functions can call cache_clear all, they can be smart enough to cache_clear only those blocks that are changed by them. Some blocks won't be cacheable anyways, say there is little use in caching 'active forum topics' ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 19, 2005 - 09:15 : Dries Frankly, I don't understand what you are trying to say. What is a 'dynamic', a 'static' and a 'standalone block'? What is the suffix for? What is the advantage of making node and taxonomy views blocks? If there is no big advantage, this is just bloat. All in all, it looks pretty complex to me. If we make Drupal more flexible _and_ more complex, people will get upset, and we end up being like Plone. Drupal's simplicity is something to foster, as it allows people to go in, and change stuff. The focus is to make Drupal simpler _and_ more flexible. I merely spent 10 minutes looking at this (reading your explanation twice, staring at the code), and the newly added complexity simply turns me off. Maybe that is because I don't understand what we are gaining. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 19, 2005 - 09:34 : Bèr Kessels * The first thing we gain, is, very slmple: more regions. But, how many? what regions? on what pages? in what location? bearing which name? For all these issues we need some callback system. To allow themers, administrators and module developers to give answers to all these questions. what we have now: sidebars, with only admin settings, is simply too limited: It takes serious hacking (~15 lines of code in your theme) to get a login block in your header! * The second thing we get for free: We are passing along chuncks of HTML, so why not cache them in a central place. Practice points out that our current cache is not used well. We leave it to developers to cache. And developers are lazy by nature. Just looks at all the places where caching should have been done, but is not. 9/10contribs have at least one of these places. You must actually see these issues separate. The new central blocks pulling system, and the caching. the latter is something that we get for free, a high level of advanced caching (how often has not been put forward Drupal seiously lacks better/advanced caching?). But we get it only for free if it is co-developed with the new regions blocks. And Last but not least, everything is a block, from a themer point of veiw. I know developers tend to think: I do the content, and do not care about where and how it turns up. That results in a content-centric system, what we have now. Everythng is built around aa single chunk of content. while, in fact content, is yet another block. Look at http://www.terminus1525.ca/index.php?l=en or http://www.franklinpennsylvania.us/ as it stands now, its up to the developer to concenate all the HTML in the center area, into a huge chunk of HTML. While in fact everyone can see that these are a lot of separate blocks.

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[drupal-devel] [feature] Enable multiple block regions (not just "left" and "right" sidebars)
by Bèr Kessels 19 Jun '05

19 Jun '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/16216 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: block.module Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: paragkenia Updated by: Bèr Kessels Status: patch * The first thing we gain, is, very slmple: more regions. But, how many? what regions? on what pages? in what location? bearing which name? For all these issues we need some callback system. To allow themers, administrators and module developers to give answers to all these questions. what we have now: sidebars, with only admin settings, is simply too limited: It takes serious hacking (~15 lines of code in your theme) to get a login block in your header! * The second thing we get for free: We are passing along chuncks of HTML, so why not cache them in a central place. Practice points out that our current cache is not used well. We leave it to developers to cache. And developers are lazy by nature. Just looks at all the places where caching should have been done, but is not. 9/10contribs have at least one of these places. You must actually see these issues separate. The new central blocks pulling system, and the caching. the latter is something that we get for free, a high level of advanced caching (how often has not been put forward Drupal seiously lacks better/advanced caching?). But we get it only for free if it is co-developed with the new regions blocks. And Last but not least, everything is a block, from a themer point of veiw. I know developers tend to think: I do the content, and do not care about where and how it turns up. That results in a content-centric system, what we have now. Everythng is built around aa single chunk of content. while, in fact content, is yet another block. Look at http://www.terminus1525.ca/index.php?l=en or http://www.franklinpennsylvania.us/ as it stands now, its up to the developer to concenate all the HTML in the center area, into a huge chunk of HTML. While in fact everyone can see that these are a lot of separate blocks. Bèr Kessels Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 26, 2005 - 11:27 : paragkenia I read the comparision discussion between *Drupal* and *Mambo*. In several messages it was outlined that Drupal can place blocks only in right and left and not flexible to put them on anywhere where one want. It will be great if this can be changed in upcoming versions. I am no pro at PHP, so don't know how much time this task will take, but I think it is very important. parag ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 15, 2005 - 02:44 : nedjo This issue was apparently partially addressed in issue http://drupal.org/node/19694 [1]. [1] http://drupal.org/node/19694 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 01:24 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block-dynamic-regions.patch (8.17 KB) This much-requested functionality - to have the ability to place blocks in more than the two predefined regions - was partially addressed in issue http://drupal.org/node/19694. [2]. But "blocks" are still limited to the "left" and "right" sidebars (hard-coded in block.module). This patch is a first step designed to enable multiple (eventually, admin-definable) regions for blocks. I've moved the existing "left" and "right" block regions to a 'region' table (with ids of 0 and 1, as currently used in themes). Then all references to the regions are drawn dynamically from the table. This way, if further records are added, they will appear in the list of available regions for block placement. Doing this actually reduces some duplicated code, since it's no longer necessary to repeat code blocks for each of "left" and "right". As it stands, the patch doesn't add any new functionality--but I don't think it breaks anything either. New functionality would need (a) new regions defined, and (b) changes to themes. A simple first step might be, e.g., to add a "footer" region and then add a call in the footer generation to append any blocks assigned to the footer region there. I'm setting this to patch, but I'm aware that it needs some discussion and refining before it'll be ready to apply. [2] http://drupal.org/node/19694. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 02:05 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block_regions.png (5.65 KB) Here's a screenshot showing the block admin page, with drop-downs for region placement (the options are dynamically generated based on defined regions). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 03:57 : adrian The biggest problem with this is that you can have multiple themes, and each of these themes can have different regions available. Also, the method of defining which regions are available needs to be standardised. Some of the work that me and Vlado are working on for the install system would go towards solving that problem (ie: meta information for modules, themes and styles). This has been discussed to death, but the general consensus has been that we _want_ to do this, but we need to solve a few other problems properly first, the most pertinent being the interface issue. Chris (factoryjoe) recently did a whole mess of workflows for something related to this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 05:09 : syscrusher The first paragraph of adrian [3]'s post is a point that occurred to me also, as I read this thread. One suggestion would be to separate the definition and configuration of blocks, on one hand, from the placement of those blocks, on the other hand. In other words, Drupal core provides a mechanism defining what blocks exist, which of these are on by default or off by default and user-selectable vs. which are forced on for all users, and the configuration (if applicable) of specialized blocks defined by particular modules. Each theme provides a standard hook function that returns an array of region names and help/description text, e.g., array('left'=>t('This vertical region is left of the main content area'), 'right'=>t('This vertical region is right of the main content area'), 'footer'=>t('The footer is below the left, right, and main content areas of the page')). The theme part of Drupal core (i.e., theme.module itself, not the individual themes) provides a standard UI that is displayed within config of *each theme* (but is one physical code base within theme.module) that allows the administrator to map blocks defined by Drupal core into regions defined by the theme, and storing that mapping as an theme-to-block_ID-to-region_ID (with weight) table in the database. From there, the actual page rendering is similar to what's being done now, but there is more of it. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the key to solving this problem is breaking it along its degrees of orthogonality, and there are three -- two in Drupal core and one in the individual theme. Scott [3] http://drupal.org//user/1517 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 08:14 : Dries Scott, is right. The theme should export its available regions. Then the administrator's task is to assign blocks to regions (not to setup regions). A theme could have configurable regions, but that internal to the theme. To me, the real challenge is the UI and the interaction design. Configuring blocks could easily become a real pain (while most themes continue to use 'left' and 'right'.) Of course, we can implement all the functionality, default everything to 'left' and 'right', and worry about the UI later. This should be fairly straightforward to implement and nedjo's patch looks like a first step in the right direction. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 22:09 : nedjo I agree with the suggested approach of themes registering their regions. I'd see this happening when a particular theme is activiated (or upgraded). Regions would be an array of names (e.g., 'left', 'right', 'footer'). New records would be created in the region table only for region names not previously registered. Some areas I'm not clear on, or that need further work: * Table naming Should a new table be 'region' or 'regions' (I've used 'region')? I don't see a convention among existing table names, some of which are singular and others plural. * Default values I've kept the existing '0' and '1' ids for regions (left and right, respectively), for backward compatibility. But this means we can't use autoincrement for the region id (rid), since autoincrements seem to begin with 1. Likely we should change to autogenerated ids. * Initial records Using the INSERT INTO statements as I've done for the initial region entries is probably counterproductive, since sooner or later they'll have to be dynamically generated. I was hoping this could be a preliminary patch, with the main work coming later, but likely we need to solve region registration by themes before this patch is applied. I don't have a good idea of how region registration by themes would be implemented (a hook on theme activation?), and invite suggestions or implementations. * Theme system changes Besides region registration, the other change I'm seeing that would be needed in the theme system is loading blocks by region name, rather than region id. This is because the ids currently used ('0' and '1') in theory might be diffferent on a particular install. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 22:18 : syscrusher Instead of having themes "register" their regions, why not just add a theme API hook called them_regions() that returns an associative array of $region_name=>t($region_helptext)? This would be in keeping with other similar API functions, such as those that return what permissions apply to a module or what node types are defined by a module. Most themes are going to define only a small number of regions (two being the typical case now, but I could see five or six in a complex theme), so returning a constant array will be faster than querying SQL to obtain an array of rows. There could be (optionally, at the discretion of whoever builds this thing) another API hook like theme_region_properties($region_name) that returns an associative array with detailed info for a given region, such as extended help text with recommended usage instructions for the region. Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 22:19 : syscrusher s/them_regions/theme_regions/g ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 23:47 : adrian Because. The most common 'theme' is a phptemplate theme. And there needs to be a generic method for specifying the regions available, in a non hook_function format.. Themes get their names from the directory in which they are contained.. when copying the theme to another directory, there must be _no_ modifications necessary to allow normal usage. This is one of the tenets of the new template system I designed. You would need a standard way to define meta-information for themes, that does not need to be modified when copied to a new directory. We are working on this in the install system work, as you need a way external of Drupal to define the module dependencies and some other things. My approach would be to add a theme.dsc text file to the directory, which would allow you to specify meta-information. For instance : ---- regions: left, right, footer, center, mountie author: Johnny McAngstyPants ---- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 03:00 : syscrusher Adrian wrote: " Themes get their names from the directory in which they are contained.. when copying the theme to another directory, there must be _no_ modifications necessary to allow normal usage. This is one of the tenets of the new template system I designed. " A very good point. But region names don't have to be unique across different themes, so my hook function wouldn't have to be modified. The suggestion I made for the mapping metadata was three factors: theme ID or name, region ID or name, and block ID (plus one non-key weight value to order the blocks within a region, but this is not relevant here). I'm not familiar enough with PHP template to be able to respond to your comments on that one, so if you say it's not feasible to work with my schema, then I'll take your word for it. :-) Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 03:03 : syscrusher Oh, wait.....I see now what you mean! It's not the output of the function that is the problem, but the *name* of the function. Never mind. I concede your point. Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 08:44 : Jaza I'm probably jumping ahead a bit here... but something that this patch will have to eventually account for, is how to allow regions to be defined as inline. Allowing a theme to define a region's position as being anywhere on the edge of the page (i.e. top, left, right, bottom, corners, etc) is relatively easy. But what about having a region that's in the middle of a node's body, or somewhere else that's not the edge of the page? What I'm thinking of, is eventually allowing the custom region system to integrate with the CCK. Like I said, I admit that I'm jumping ahead into the future - the CCK still has a long way to go before it's ready. But ultimately, it would be cool if a theme could define a region as being after, say, the "rating" field in nodes of type "movie review". This would make the region (and the blocks in it) truly inline and in context with the actual content of the node. This would be a huge step forward compared to the current block system, which doesn't allow you to mix the presentation of blocks and nodes at all. In Drupal ATM, blocks and "the rest of the page" are totally separate, and really you have no choice but to display them as such. The result of this is that information in blocks that really should be displayed as part of a node, gets literally "pushed to the side", and always seems secondary to the actual content. Often the block has content that is just as important as the content of the node itself. Another option (of less merit, IMO - because of the extra maintenance work, and lack of enforced consistency) would be to have a region filter. You could then choose where to place an inline region on a per-node basis, by entering text such as [region:2] (example based on image_filter syntax) into the node body. Anyway, just thought I'd throw that idea into the open. I don't expect it will be implemented any time soon, but it's something to think about. Jeremy ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 09:54 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-1.png (1.29 KB) Imo the 'regions' are more than you guys name here.. FOr example I attached 2 screens which only shows you the regions.. What I think is that it should always be possible to have free names for the regions. No matter if i call - the region where my content appears in - 'content' or 'site items'.. See attached screens.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 09:56 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-2.png (1.39 KB) And the second... See these links: - http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-1.png - http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-2.png ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 16:22 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block-dynamic-regions2.patch (13.39 KB) Here's a revised patch implementing some of the ideas so far. I've used the theme engine - rather than individual themes - to generate the list of available regions. I know this isn't ideal, but e.g. for xtemplate it's at present the only option--no logic is possible in the individual theme. region is changed to a varchar field from the current tinyint. I've roughed in several regions--really just for demo purposes. More thought and work would be needed to refine them (e.g., styling, etc.). But this maybe moves the conversation forward. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 22:26 : Dries This patch enables different regions to be used. That is a good thing. The next question is: should we take into account that different themes could assign blocks to different regions? Lots of problems would be solved if (i) there could only be one active theme on a website or (ii) if all themes would have a common set of regions. (This "let users select their own theme"-thing is a left-over from the early days, except for WAP stuff maybe.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 22:37 : killes(a)www.drop.org Giving up multiple theme support would be a great thing. People could still select from multiple style sheets. WAP shoud not be a user preference setting, but automatically detected and redirected to a special site with a WAP theme. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 22:48 : adrian You would then lose the ability to make a special front page theme for use with the sections module, for instance. Also, currently styles exist in the same namespace as themes, and we would have to make more a distinction of styles vs templates (or themes), but I do think this could help simplify things. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 17:54 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block-dynamic-regions3.patch (15.69 KB) The main issue raised, if I'm understanding well: if a theme or theme engine is present that offers regions other than those available in the default theme, any blocks assigned to those regions will be invisible to most users. Here's a revised patch addressing the concern. I've added a test for each region to see whether it's also available in the current default theme. (Actually, I'm realizing as I write this, I've used the theme engine--so it would need to be updated to test first if an engine is being used.) In any case, any regions not available by default are starred, and a message text appears (only if necessary). If there's support for the approach, I'd be happy to finish the patch. Remaining work: * extend to work with non-engine themes * finalize base set of regions to implement * implement common region set in all core themes (for now I've only done xtemplate) * work on CSS display (how blocks in each region should look) This last point I'm not too confident on and would look for help/suggestions. Screenshot to come. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 17:56 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block_regions_message.png (12.34 KB) Screenshot showing starring of non-default regions plus message. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 18:19 : killes(a)www.drop.org I like that approach. +1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 18:23 : resmini My two cents. If this has to be done (and it should), better get rid of spatial definitions for areas such as left, right, top, bottom, etc. Use semantic names related to content and let the theme take care of their positioning interely. Also note that there in an ongoing debate in IA trying to build up a standard naming convention for page regions in a way that is semantically (and logically) correct. Just for the sake of it, you can check http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/archives/whats_in_a_name.html http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/archives/whats_in_a_name_pt2.html with follow-ups, including Eric Meyer's. There are more substantial contributes in the AIfIA web site, but I can't seem to find them now. I'll post a link or an abstract if I manage to. -- vector at exea dot it ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 19:15 : nedjo Good points, useful references. The default regions I'm thinking of are: 'banner' => t('banner'), 'left' => t('left sidebar'), 'right' => t('right sidebar'), 'body_top' => t('body top'), 'body_bottom' => t('body bottom'), 'footer' => t('footer') Perhaps "body" would be better as "content"? It would be easy enough to add in more regions, e.g., within the content (after title, after help, etc.) One issue is that many of these regions will already have rendered content. Should the blocks come before or after that other content? I've assumed after for banner and footer, while giving both options in body. In any case, refinements or suggestions would be great. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 19:56 : resmini Well, 'banner' => t('banner'), 'left' => t('left sidebar'), 'right' => t('right sidebar'), 'body_top' => t('body top'), 'body_bottom' => t('body bottom'), 'footer' => t('footer') The classic (as far as classic goes for something Web related) scheme comprises 5 spatial regions, much like stefan's http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-1.png with a left area mirroring the one called 'blocks'. Call them top, left, center, right, bottom. Variants usually exclude one or more of these, layout-wise. If we talk content (semantic) instead, things get a bit more complicated, as these spatial regions normally include more than one content-area. The top, for example, could include ad banners and the site's header, or the main menu. But these merge seamlessly with CSS definitions, which are definitely something that should get properly standardized (most of the errors / inconsistencies I'm encountering with Drupal today are related to this), but this is out of scope in this thread. What I somewhat object to the definitions above is that it mixes the two approaches. 'banner' is not spatial, is content, as it is the distinction between body top and bottom. If 'banner' goes there, it is 'top', whatever that might be. I designed a couple of web sites which had headers/logos/banners at the bottom of the page, and I'm not exactly the wildest designer you'll probably meet. And if we include body_top and _bottom, we should also add 'navigation', or 'menu' and some other content-related semantic region (impressum, or company_data, or whatever). I suggest that either we go along 'top' => t('banner'), 'left' => t('left sidebar'), 'center' => t('body'), 'right' => t('right sidebar'), 'bottom' => t('footer') or we dedicate some time to detailing what could possibly fit there semantically, which is perfectly possible without limiting design freedom or whatever, since the vocabulary is not infinite, but not something you do out of the blue. Please note that I understand t('something') to be an example, since such a layout only defines regions on the page, not semantic regions. My main content could fit nicely in the bottom region. As for the names for the regions, they are not important, as much as they are coherent and enforced. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 22:16 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions-final.png (2.39 KB) Maybe something like this??? But, I have to say that I _really_ liked the solution to split the 'content'-region into the 'content' and 'beneath content'.. I love that! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 23:20 : resmini Stefan, yes. That's basically what you can build if you stick with spatial, and this layout can generate quite an amount of (sane) layout variations even if you interpret it strictly (suppose a default) as <div id="header"> </div> <div id="left-bar"> </div> <div id="content"> </div> <div id="right-bar"> </div> <div id="footer"> </div> What you can do with this is left basically to the theme designers and their use of CSS, CSS-P or tables (brrr), but this could be an easy and proper way to identify macro-regions in which more accurate positioning happens at a more specific level. I'm all in favour of subsequent identification of sub-areas (top and bottom in body), but I don't think it would be a good idea to mix the different approaches I mentioned in my previous post. A site with lots of things going on or which is not just blogging surely has the need to use its content area in a wiser manner than just putting there 'content', the number of modules doing precisely this is more than proof, but that falls more in a 'Drupal definitive guide to semantics', in which CSS selectors are used or suggested strategically for such a scope. >From this point of view and for the sake of this thread, any unique area / div (#name) could (should?) be a target for blocks, and this in my opinion (*) would be the perfect solution, but I do not know if and how this is even remotely possible in the current Drupal. (*) It's quite late, local time, and it was a looong working day. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 23:38 : resmini Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions-final-variation.png (1.9 KB) Just to be clear, I add a variation of stefan's scheme that shows how this is *not* by any means positional, but spatial, or better relational. Use your CSS imagination to take out regions, reduce them to empty containers, enlarge them, make them taller, shorter, whatever. 5 regions, do what you like. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 23:44 : resmini Sorry, I forgot. And this is also why I'm not too keen on calling anything 'content'. If I enlarge my right region enough, why not put my content there? Shouldn't this be a theme-level concern? It's nothing serious, but if my center area is called 'center' (or something similar and more sexy), I won't confuse anybody. This is left, center, right: do with them what you prefer. Content in the bottom? Show me. If I call something 'content', I'm more than suggesting that content goes there, and only there. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 09:17 : stefan nagtegaal Resmini, maybe it is only me but I think that you are making a mistake in your way of thinking.. I get the feeling that you're mixing the 'regions' and 'divs'.. the 'regioins' should have meaningfull sentences, but the divs shouldn'thave.. As an example: $region_name => $content_body here we go: 'header' => $logo 'left sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'left') 'right sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'right') 'content' => $content 'footer' => $footer. So, $region_name does not have to be equal to the id or class of the divs.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 10:27 : resmini Stefan, >So, $region_name does not have to be equal to the id or class of the divs.. Yes, absolutely. I probably didn't make myself very clear: what I'm trying to point out is that in 'header' => $logo 'left sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'left') 'right sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'right') 'content' => $content 'footer' => $footer. there is no reason at all to call 'content' the region that holds $content. nedjo asked in #24 'body_top' => t('body top'), 'body_bottom' => t('body bottom'), if /Perhaps "body" would be better as "content"?/ and all my reasoning is simply that no, that is not content, or it shouldn't be (or better: it may happen that main content is elsewhere). As a matter of fact, even the connotation 'sidebar' doesn't fit very well logically. To make it short: Today's method works, but has limits. Mambo, which paragkenia quotes at the beginning, handles more 'user regions' but in pure Mambo style conventions are so loose that they are hardly useful. If we define regions, as in nedjo's example, in my opinion these regions shouldn't imply informational layouting, only relational positioning (that is, where they stay in the browser viewport). I know it may look like overdesigning, but Drupal constantly enforces conventions and coding guidelines everywhere: this is one of the best aspects of the project and I think it should carry to the layout. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 10:32 : stefan nagtegaal While I think that 'body_*' is not as self explaining as 'content_*' I vote for using 'content_*'.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 25, 2005 - 18:48 : chx Let's get back to the code. If my understanding is correct the big discussion is about how to name potiental rectangular areas _after_ this is commited. So, first get this committed. What's need to make that happen? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 25, 2005 - 19:56 : chx I spoke with Moshe, Steven, JonBob and the result is: keys shall be numbers, and themes shall define the values. We will make region zero and one required. There will be a define('REGION_CONTENT', 0) and a define('REGION_SIDEBAR', 1); so you can have readable code still. Either wait for me to code it or feel to do it yourself, just drop me a mail via the contact form if you are doing it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 27, 2005 - 17:14 : nedjo Károly, it's great if you're willing to take on finishing this. I tried to summarize remaining work in update 20, above [4]. The numerical keys look fine to me. In terms of an initial default set of regions, one quirk is this: for now, so far as I can see (and assuming the approach I sketched in), available regions can be defined only in (a) theme engines and (b) individual themes that don't use an engine. So, for instance, an individual xtemplate based theme can't define its own custom regions; they need to be defined in the theme engine. (Unless and until the whole theme system should switch to the sort of configuration file adrian suggested above [5].) Which is to say that, under this approach, we'll be defining a set of regions for each engine, and then all themes using that engine should try to implement those regions. (Otherwise, if a site admin selects a region defined in the engine but not implemented in the default theme, the content won't appear.) Please let me know if there's anything in what I've done that isn't clear, or if you want to pass some or all of this back. Thanks! [4] http://www.drupal.org/node/16216#comment-27398 [5] http://www.drupal.org/node/16216#comment-27052 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 9, 2005 - 21:36 : chx I had a "short" discussion with the UI team leader ie. Ber Kessels. The outcoming is that we will change hook_block so that it uses callbacks a bit like menu system. Here's an example: <?php function module_block() { $items = array(); $items['module_header'] = array('callback' => 'mymodule_page', 'weight' => -50, 'region' => 'content' , 'cache' => TRUE, 'pages' => "node/*\n<front>"); return $items; } ?> Please note that we are allowing caching the themed output of each block independently. The theme system will execute hook_block as it does now and it'll execute the callbacks defined in module_block as well. Of course if the callback is cacheable and in the cache, it'll print it from cache. If it's themeable and not in the cache, it'll cache it before printing. Pages contains a string (could be PHP code!) which can be overriden in the block configuration screen. Callbacks defined in hook_menu will have lot less functionality after this, they will be used for non-themed pages mainly. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 9, 2005 - 21:45 : chx More explanation is requested for the example. module_header is the unqiue name of the block. pages define on which pages the block is visible. ('pages' in the block configuration screen.) Maybe I'll implement 'visibility' from the same screen as well. callback, weight are well known Drupal terms. cache is a boolean which defines whether given output is cacheable or not. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 9, 2005 - 21:47 : chx Ber, Dries, do not kill me! Ber chaired the usability meeting in Antwerp, that's all. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 9, 2005 - 21:52 : Bèr Kessels Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/more_regions_principle.png (123.29 KB) attached is a schematic which might clarify this a little. And I would also like to comment on me being the UI leader: I do not consider myself any leader, no ofeence, though. Just to clarify that. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 9, 2005 - 23:42 : nedjo I am not opposed to the idea of changing the _block() hook to use callbacks (I have no opinion on it, not immediately grasping the need), but this seems quite distinct from the aim of enabling multiple and extensible regions. Why can't we just move ahead with the block generalization? I suggest: * quickly implement the proposed block region generalization, using only the two existing regions (i.e., implementing them in core themes) * later worry about: - adding further regions (the details of which are best done by those primarily responsible for the particular themes) - possible changes to the _block() hook. Wouldn't this make sense? Or am I missing some pressing reason for which the block generalization has to wait? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 02:28 : killes(a)www.drop.org "Or am I missing some pressing reason for which the block generalization has to wait?" I might be missing something too, but I thought Chx was just talking about the block generalization and proposing a way to code it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 03:41 : factoryjoe I wanted to chime in with this discussion because it's an important one and has some really huge implications for Drupal moving forward. That said, I also have a day job pulling all my attention which means that the big ideas I have for this problem can't be put into a complete visual form for at least a week or more. In the meantime, I'd like to offer a few thoughts on the matter. * *Regions do not belong in themes.* Blocks were originally separate from themes for a reason. Themes should define the general look and feel of a site -- and to some extent a site's behavior. Layouts which define the spatial relationship between regions belong in some intermediary between style and content, which does not currently exist in Drupal. * I would propose that *layouts become a new kind of CCK tool.* By that I mean that they can be defined, shared and deployed very easily -- even as simply as tossing a directory of some .layout textfiles into a layouts/ directory. Note that this suggestion has nothing to do with the way CCK /might actually/ work right now; instead I'm suggesting how I would like it to work. I would like, for example, to create a CCK item like a "person" and ship it with a .layout file that carries all the semantic goodness needed to output that "person" to the screen in juicy, semantic markup... which anyone can come along and theme to their heart's content. * *Creating shareable layouts should be relatively painless.* Dashboard [6] sets the bar for easy hackability. It should be that easy to create layouts for Drupal... I can imagine creating an "iTunes layout" or an "Image Gallery" layout and so on... If we used something akin to PHPTal to develop the layouts, we could keep development fairly standard while making it possible for more folks to hack up cool and innovative layouts. * *Layouts should be extensible.. to a degree.* I see a huge problem with how this discussion has floated back and forth between semantic and spatial region naming. Because we talk about this problem in those terms, we fail to identify the real problem and opportunities presented to us. Here's the thing: when you predefine regions, you limit creativity and the ability of people to really use the system. On the other hand, when you make a system too flexibile, it quickly becomes unwieldy. In all the mockups presented above, both classes of problems would arise. Therefore we need to think about a way to stay flexibile while "taming the beast." * To that end, I suggest developing *self-contained layouts that are contextually-complete.* So for the example of the iTunes search layout... you would know before hand that you get a couple multiple select boxes that you can hook up to whatever taxonomies you want to progressively filter [nodes]. You could even change the .layout file, allowing you to theme it to your liking -- even though that would totally optional, given the layout's internal default styling. Once you've got your layout, you would go into a layout module UI [7], create a new layout [8], select the layout from a list [9] and then give it a path so you can access the layout... You would then walk through a wizard [10] that would help you populate that layout with all kinds of nice Drupally goodies... feeds, node listings, PHP code, etc. The power in this approach is multifold. For one, it snaps Drupal out of its block mentality and allows designers to really innovate with individual page designs. In fact, I've already thought out how I could reimplement Flickr using this system, combined with Drupal's native feeds, taxonomy and menu module, and I'd barely break a sweat... sort of. ;) But anyway, this is a very productive conversation to be having, but I really think that we should consider whether the old paradigm, as such, really pushes Drupal as far forward as we have the opportunity to go. [6] http://drupal.org/apple.com/macosx/theater/dashboard.html [7] http://photos4.flickr.com/6944826_90af237c99_o.png [8] http://www.factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/new.html [9] http://www.factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/new_layout.html [10] http://www.factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/testing_add.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 05:34 : chx While factoryjoe may be right, I could be right as well. Regions has definitely something to do with themes, after all it's the theme that renders the page, and it can only render regions that it knows of. So, instead of postponing this into the far future when someone comes out with a layout system, I code this now. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 06:22 : Dries The proposed 'weight', 'region' and 'pages' would be configurable, not? Are these just defaults? The 'callback' and 'cache' options are nice to have. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 06:25 : chx Yes, blocks can provide a default for everything on the block and and configuration screen. Of course, you can override these in the UI. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 10:02 : Bèr Kessels Dries: yes, the region, weight and pages will be configurable from an admin interface. What we tried to address here, is a method for developers to choose good defaults. Take for example "logo". that should be enabled by default in a regions called header, rendered on all pages, and have a very light weight. We should not force an admin to visit the blocks admin before she can see or use the logo. Chris: I do not know if you have ever tried typo3. Its concept is some form of builder system. I do not like thar, because far too complex. If we ever get sme kind of builder in core (if ever) it will require a lot of work, and even more usability research. So for now such a builder is far out of our reach. Lets aim at goals that are more realistic ;) So: it does belong in themes, its the best place that is still realistic. I do like your visions, Chris, but I hope you agree they are not realistic, yet. So, maybe you can think of a path towards your visions, ow we can reach such a builder-system, you describe? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 15:52 : factoryjoe My browser crashed before I was able to submit my followup to chx's comment... I have no problem with the current work going forward and am happy to see it happening. I know that my ideas are typically outlandlish and far off... That's the kind of design I enjoy doing! In any case, I see chx's solution being a means to an end; once we have abstracted the region code, it become much easier for me to get some help creating my vision. In the meantime, and as a demonstration of how I see this layout system working (to answer, I hope, Ber's concerns about clunkiness), I've created a workflow movie that shows off how fast you'd be able to add content to the system. Check it out: http://factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/media/layout_workflow_v1.mov Feedback appreciated. And, if you want to try the demo out yourself (it's all hardcoded, like a "movie set" for my UI), go here: http://factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 17:45 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block-dynamic-regions4.patch (13.56 KB) "I might be missing something too, but I thought Chx was just talking about the block generalization and proposing a way to code it. " Well, if I can say so respectfully, I don't think so. Not so far as I can see identifying problems with my original patch, this interesting discussion is rather addressing the (useful, but logically subsequent) question "once we have multiple regions, how should we work with them?". It's perhaps demonstrating our propensity to try to do more rather than less with a given patch--to talk for a long time when a first step solution is already in place. So here is a (yes, interim!) small, focused, and tested patch to remove the hard-coded regions. I've stripped it down so it does nothing more than (a) make block regions declared by themes rather than hard-coded and (b) implement the existing left and right regions in existing core themes. Please, try it out, I think you'll like it. I'm of the (I'm hoping not scandalous) opinion that it can be applied right away, and so clear the way for further progress. In particular, this patch leaves the adding and configuring of additional regions to theme authors/maintainers, who are best qualified for the work. "I spoke with Moshe, Steven, JonBob and the result is: keys shall be numbers, and themes shall define the values. We will make region zero and one required. " The reason I moved from numbers to strings (e.g., "left") is that a theme author defining regions has no way of knowing what regions might have already been defined, and therefore what integers might have aleady been used. It's like module and theme names--we'd have to use random numbers to avoid conflicts, so we're better off with string names. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 19:17 : Bèr Kessels nedjo, I am not a fan of your solution for blocks that dissapear. It breaks the ability to allow more themes on a site. if important blocks dont show up, your site will simply break. I would rather suggest that every theme MUST have a region called 'default'. any blocks that want to go into a non-existing region, will be placed there. We must define a standard listy of suggested region names. to avoid a wildgrowth of names. I am not sure if i like the way you do function phptemplate_regions(). these regions should be defined in the templqtes, not the engine. Otherwise all phptemplate themes will still all have two regions. Note that i did not test your patch thouroughly, just applied and looked at. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 20:38 : nedjo Thanks for your comments. I think we're getting somewhere. "I am not a fan of your solution for blocks that dissapear. It breaks the ability to allow more themes on a site. if important blocks dont show up, your site will simply break. I would rather suggest that every theme MUST have a region called 'default'. any blocks that want to go into a non-existing region, will be placed there. " Good suggestion. Having a default region for blocks to show up sounds like a valuable backup. I'm thinking we might want to have a way to designate a given region as the default, rather than having to have one named 'default'. Thoughts? "We must define a standard listy of suggested region names. to avoid a wildgrowth of names. " Sure. But the patch doesn't prevent doing that--it enables it. "I am not sure if i like the way you do function phptemplate_regions(). these regions should be defined in the templqtes, not the engine. Otherwise all phptemplate themes will still all have two regions. " Oh, I wholeheartedly agree, and I've noted the issue above. But unless we substantially rewrite the engines, some region definition is needed in the engines, as they call blocks. Should we therefore define a base set in the engine, then call a hook from the engine to add any other regions from themes based on that engine? If so, where in the theme's files should such a hook be located? And a side note. Do let's make an effort to keep our comments friendly. Taking the time to note one or two things that do work or are done well as part of a review is I believe a valuable habit. It helps to confirm what is indeed accomplished. Beyond this, it helps to maintain the idea that we are collaborating on shared goals, rather than pushing individual and competing visions, and that contributions and work are appreciated, rather than being invitations to criticism. Thanks, Nedjo ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 20:42 : chx I am implementing http://drupal.org/node/16216#comment-29282 but it takes time. regions again have names. default and sidebar regions are mandatory. This has little to do with nedjo's code much more with his idea -- I looked at the screenshot and said, OK this is great but... we'd like to have a lot more 'blocks' if this comes through, henceforth the above mentioned solution. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 21:39 : nedjo Okay, thanks for the clarification, I hadn't understood that you were taking a new approach rather than building on what I'd begun. Given that that's the case, staging as I'd suggested obviously won't work so I'm content to wait and see what you accomplish. I'd only suggest, don't feel like you need necessarily to do everything all at once. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 13, 2005 - 09:34 : Bèr Kessels Nedjo, sorry if the sound of my comment was hostile. it was never meant to be that way. I am busy, and thus did not want to comment all the things i liked about your patch, but chose to pick the much smaller amount of things I thought could use some improvement. I will try to keep in mind to be more friendly next times. Also, not all of us are as fluent in English as our native English speakers. I think its good to keep in mind that for a lot of us, communication in English is not as easy as it may seem. For me, it often requires a lot of concentration to get the subtleties right. I mean: I can type some English text, look up words in the dictionary, but to get small yet important subtleties in my texts is very hard, often. But, that all said: I liked your patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 10, 2005 - 12:08 : jakeg How far off is this from being officially released or at least usable? If its usable now, what files will I need to implement it? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 10, 2005 - 13:19 : Kobus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-3.png (2.21 KB) To add to Stefan's suggestions with the two screenshots, I modified one of them a bit, and this is how I understand Jaza's post, and yes, I agree, this would be a wonderful feature! I can't wait! Imagine how good it would look if I had a theme that has a clear white background (not visible blocks) and then these seemingly random boxes on the page, as shown in the screenshot. Especially where I can place it anywhere around the node like Jaza said with a [region:2] block etc. I say again: I can't wait! Kobus ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 10, 2005 - 14:59 : chx I need 3-4 hrs of peace to implement the callback based thing. That's a lot these days. Let's hope I'll get on it in the following days. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 18, 2005 - 23:32 : chx Here's an example again of how hook_block will look like: <?php function module_block() { $items = array(); $items['module_header'] = array('callback' => 'mymodule_function', 'callback arguments' => arg(1), 'weight' => -50, 'region' => 'content', 'cache' => TRUE, ''pages' => "node/*\n<front>"); return $items; } ?> Items are keyed by unique IDs. The template system will call module_invoke_all('block'), put the rendered HTML of the blocks into regions sorted by weight. The rendered HTML is cached if it is allowed. More keys will be introduced later, but now basically we just throw everything from block configure in here, and add callback, callback arguments, region. Node teasers or fullly rendered nodes are blocks, too. Almost everything is. So, here what happens when we are on taxonomy/term/1: taxonomy_render_nodes is called it calls block_set('node_view', $weight, $node, $teaser, $page); a few times, so a few node_view blocks will be on the page later the theme system is invoked. It will ask the block system to collect all blocks, dynamic and the static blocks as well. For all dynamic blocks we have a block defined in hook_block somewhere, like the definition above, with one exception: it will have a 'standalone' => FALSE pair, so it is not a standalone block which is automatically rendered but something that needs to explicitely requested. Also, we may define a 'suffix' => 'somefunction' pair which provides us with a cache ID suffix. Look at the code below: <?php function block_collect_blocks() { // get all block definitions $static_blocks = module_invoke_all('block'); // iterate of the dynamic blocks set on the page foreach (block_get() as $dynamic_block) { // get the block definition for the given dynamic block $static_block = $static_blocks[$dynamic_block['block']]; // merge the callback arguments from the dynamic and static. dynamic_block['callback arguments'] is always set though // may be empty if (isset($static_block['callback arguments'])) { $dynamic_block['callback arguments'] = array_merge($static_block['arguments'], $dynamic_block['callback arguments']); } // try to get a cache ID suffix $suffix = function_exists($static_block['suffix']) && call_user_func_array($static_block['suffix'], $dynamic_block['callback arguments']); // if the block is cacheable or the suffix function says that it is cacheable by setting a suffix if ($static_block['cache'] || $suffix) { // set cache ID $cid = 'block:'. $dynamic_block['block'] .':'. $suffix; // try to get the rendered HTML from cache if ($block_rendered = cache_get($cid)) { $return[$static_block['region'][$dynamic_block['weight']][] = $static_block_rendered; continue; } } // render the block $block_rendered = call_user_func_array($static_block['callback'], $dynamic_block['callback arguments']); // store the block for return $return[$static_block['region'][$dynamic_block['weight']][] = $static_block_rendered; if ($static_block['cache'] || $suffix) { // if cacheable, do it cache_set($cid, $static_block_rendered); } } foreach ($static_blocks as $key => $static_block) { // is this a stand alone block, like in Drupal 4.6? if ($static_block['standalone']) { // now, the above is repeated, save that we do not have a dynamic_block here $suffix = function_exists($static_block['suffix']) && call_user_func_array($static_block['suffix'], $static_block['callback arguments']); if ($static_block['cache'] || $suffix) { $cid = "block:$key:$suffix"; if ($block_rendered = cache_get($cid)) { $return[$static_block['region'][$static_block['weight']][] = $static_block_rendered; continue; } } $block_rendered = call_user_func_array($static_block['callback'], $static_block['callback arguments']); $return[$static_block['region']][$static_block['weight']][] = $static_block_rendered; if ($static_block['cache'] || $suffix) { cache_set($cid, $static_block_rendered); } } } } function block_set() { static $blocks; $args = func_get_args(); if (count($args)) { $callback = array_shift($args); $weight = array_shift($args); $blocks[] = array('block' => $function, 'weight' => $weight, 'callback arguments' => $args); } return $blocks; } function block_get() { return block_set(); } ?> When to expire the block cache? Never. If functions can call cache_clear all, they can be smart enough to cache_clear only those blocks that are changed by them. Some blocks won't be cacheable anyways, say there is little use in caching 'active forum topics' ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 19, 2005 - 08:15 : Dries Frankly, I don't understand what you are trying to say. What is a 'dynamic', a 'static' and a 'standalone block'? What is the suffix for? What is the advantage of making node and taxonomy views blocks? If there is no big advantage, this is just bloat. All in all, it looks pretty complex to me. If we make Drupal more flexible _and_ more complex, people will get upset, and we end up being like Plone. Drupal's simplicity is something to foster, as it allows people to go in, and change stuff. The focus is to make Drupal simpler _and_ more flexible. I merely spent 10 minutes looking at this (reading your explanation twice, staring at the code), and the newly added complexity simply turns me off. Maybe that is because I don't understand what we are gaining.

1 0

[drupal-devel] [feature] Enable multiple block regions (not just "left" and "right" sidebars)
by Dries 19 Jun '05

19 Jun '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/16216 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: block.module Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: paragkenia Updated by: Dries Status: patch Frankly, I don't understand what you are trying to say. What is a 'dynamic', a 'static' and a 'standalone block'? What is the suffix for? What is the advantage of making node and taxonomy views blocks? If there is no big advantage, this is just bloat. All in all, it looks pretty complex to me. If we make Drupal more flexible _and_ more complex, people will get upset, and we end up being like Plone. Drupal's simplicity is something to foster, as it allows people to go in, and change stuff. The focus is to make Drupal simpler _and_ more flexible. I merely spent 10 minutes looking at this (reading your explanation twice, staring at the code), and the newly added complexity simply turns me off. Maybe that is because I don't understand what we are gaining. Dries Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 26, 2005 - 12:27 : paragkenia I read the comparision discussion between *Drupal* and *Mambo*. In several messages it was outlined that Drupal can place blocks only in right and left and not flexible to put them on anywhere where one want. It will be great if this can be changed in upcoming versions. I am no pro at PHP, so don't know how much time this task will take, but I think it is very important. parag ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 15, 2005 - 03:44 : nedjo This issue was apparently partially addressed in issue http://drupal.org/node/19694 [1]. [1] http://drupal.org/node/19694 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 02:24 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block-dynamic-regions.patch (8.17 KB) This much-requested functionality - to have the ability to place blocks in more than the two predefined regions - was partially addressed in issue http://drupal.org/node/19694. [2]. But "blocks" are still limited to the "left" and "right" sidebars (hard-coded in block.module). This patch is a first step designed to enable multiple (eventually, admin-definable) regions for blocks. I've moved the existing "left" and "right" block regions to a 'region' table (with ids of 0 and 1, as currently used in themes). Then all references to the regions are drawn dynamically from the table. This way, if further records are added, they will appear in the list of available regions for block placement. Doing this actually reduces some duplicated code, since it's no longer necessary to repeat code blocks for each of "left" and "right". As it stands, the patch doesn't add any new functionality--but I don't think it breaks anything either. New functionality would need (a) new regions defined, and (b) changes to themes. A simple first step might be, e.g., to add a "footer" region and then add a call in the footer generation to append any blocks assigned to the footer region there. I'm setting this to patch, but I'm aware that it needs some discussion and refining before it'll be ready to apply. [2] http://drupal.org/node/19694. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 03:05 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block_regions.png (5.65 KB) Here's a screenshot showing the block admin page, with drop-downs for region placement (the options are dynamically generated based on defined regions). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 04:57 : adrian The biggest problem with this is that you can have multiple themes, and each of these themes can have different regions available. Also, the method of defining which regions are available needs to be standardised. Some of the work that me and Vlado are working on for the install system would go towards solving that problem (ie: meta information for modules, themes and styles). This has been discussed to death, but the general consensus has been that we _want_ to do this, but we need to solve a few other problems properly first, the most pertinent being the interface issue. Chris (factoryjoe) recently did a whole mess of workflows for something related to this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 06:09 : syscrusher The first paragraph of adrian [3]'s post is a point that occurred to me also, as I read this thread. One suggestion would be to separate the definition and configuration of blocks, on one hand, from the placement of those blocks, on the other hand. In other words, Drupal core provides a mechanism defining what blocks exist, which of these are on by default or off by default and user-selectable vs. which are forced on for all users, and the configuration (if applicable) of specialized blocks defined by particular modules. Each theme provides a standard hook function that returns an array of region names and help/description text, e.g., array('left'=>t('This vertical region is left of the main content area'), 'right'=>t('This vertical region is right of the main content area'), 'footer'=>t('The footer is below the left, right, and main content areas of the page')). The theme part of Drupal core (i.e., theme.module itself, not the individual themes) provides a standard UI that is displayed within config of *each theme* (but is one physical code base within theme.module) that allows the administrator to map blocks defined by Drupal core into regions defined by the theme, and storing that mapping as an theme-to-block_ID-to-region_ID (with weight) table in the database. From there, the actual page rendering is similar to what's being done now, but there is more of it. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the key to solving this problem is breaking it along its degrees of orthogonality, and there are three -- two in Drupal core and one in the individual theme. Scott [3] http://drupal.org//user/1517 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 09:14 : Dries Scott, is right. The theme should export its available regions. Then the administrator's task is to assign blocks to regions (not to setup regions). A theme could have configurable regions, but that internal to the theme. To me, the real challenge is the UI and the interaction design. Configuring blocks could easily become a real pain (while most themes continue to use 'left' and 'right'.) Of course, we can implement all the functionality, default everything to 'left' and 'right', and worry about the UI later. This should be fairly straightforward to implement and nedjo's patch looks like a first step in the right direction. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 23:09 : nedjo I agree with the suggested approach of themes registering their regions. I'd see this happening when a particular theme is activiated (or upgraded). Regions would be an array of names (e.g., 'left', 'right', 'footer'). New records would be created in the region table only for region names not previously registered. Some areas I'm not clear on, or that need further work: * Table naming Should a new table be 'region' or 'regions' (I've used 'region')? I don't see a convention among existing table names, some of which are singular and others plural. * Default values I've kept the existing '0' and '1' ids for regions (left and right, respectively), for backward compatibility. But this means we can't use autoincrement for the region id (rid), since autoincrements seem to begin with 1. Likely we should change to autogenerated ids. * Initial records Using the INSERT INTO statements as I've done for the initial region entries is probably counterproductive, since sooner or later they'll have to be dynamically generated. I was hoping this could be a preliminary patch, with the main work coming later, but likely we need to solve region registration by themes before this patch is applied. I don't have a good idea of how region registration by themes would be implemented (a hook on theme activation?), and invite suggestions or implementations. * Theme system changes Besides region registration, the other change I'm seeing that would be needed in the theme system is loading blocks by region name, rather than region id. This is because the ids currently used ('0' and '1') in theory might be diffferent on a particular install. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 23:18 : syscrusher Instead of having themes "register" their regions, why not just add a theme API hook called them_regions() that returns an associative array of $region_name=>t($region_helptext)? This would be in keeping with other similar API functions, such as those that return what permissions apply to a module or what node types are defined by a module. Most themes are going to define only a small number of regions (two being the typical case now, but I could see five or six in a complex theme), so returning a constant array will be faster than querying SQL to obtain an array of rows. There could be (optionally, at the discretion of whoever builds this thing) another API hook like theme_region_properties($region_name) that returns an associative array with detailed info for a given region, such as extended help text with recommended usage instructions for the region. Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 23:19 : syscrusher s/them_regions/theme_regions/g ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 00:47 : adrian Because. The most common 'theme' is a phptemplate theme. And there needs to be a generic method for specifying the regions available, in a non hook_function format.. Themes get their names from the directory in which they are contained.. when copying the theme to another directory, there must be _no_ modifications necessary to allow normal usage. This is one of the tenets of the new template system I designed. You would need a standard way to define meta-information for themes, that does not need to be modified when copied to a new directory. We are working on this in the install system work, as you need a way external of Drupal to define the module dependencies and some other things. My approach would be to add a theme.dsc text file to the directory, which would allow you to specify meta-information. For instance : ---- regions: left, right, footer, center, mountie author: Johnny McAngstyPants ---- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 04:00 : syscrusher Adrian wrote: " Themes get their names from the directory in which they are contained.. when copying the theme to another directory, there must be _no_ modifications necessary to allow normal usage. This is one of the tenets of the new template system I designed. " A very good point. But region names don't have to be unique across different themes, so my hook function wouldn't have to be modified. The suggestion I made for the mapping metadata was three factors: theme ID or name, region ID or name, and block ID (plus one non-key weight value to order the blocks within a region, but this is not relevant here). I'm not familiar enough with PHP template to be able to respond to your comments on that one, so if you say it's not feasible to work with my schema, then I'll take your word for it. :-) Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 04:03 : syscrusher Oh, wait.....I see now what you mean! It's not the output of the function that is the problem, but the *name* of the function. Never mind. I concede your point. Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 09:44 : Jaza I'm probably jumping ahead a bit here... but something that this patch will have to eventually account for, is how to allow regions to be defined as inline. Allowing a theme to define a region's position as being anywhere on the edge of the page (i.e. top, left, right, bottom, corners, etc) is relatively easy. But what about having a region that's in the middle of a node's body, or somewhere else that's not the edge of the page? What I'm thinking of, is eventually allowing the custom region system to integrate with the CCK. Like I said, I admit that I'm jumping ahead into the future - the CCK still has a long way to go before it's ready. But ultimately, it would be cool if a theme could define a region as being after, say, the "rating" field in nodes of type "movie review". This would make the region (and the blocks in it) truly inline and in context with the actual content of the node. This would be a huge step forward compared to the current block system, which doesn't allow you to mix the presentation of blocks and nodes at all. In Drupal ATM, blocks and "the rest of the page" are totally separate, and really you have no choice but to display them as such. The result of this is that information in blocks that really should be displayed as part of a node, gets literally "pushed to the side", and always seems secondary to the actual content. Often the block has content that is just as important as the content of the node itself. Another option (of less merit, IMO - because of the extra maintenance work, and lack of enforced consistency) would be to have a region filter. You could then choose where to place an inline region on a per-node basis, by entering text such as [region:2] (example based on image_filter syntax) into the node body. Anyway, just thought I'd throw that idea into the open. I don't expect it will be implemented any time soon, but it's something to think about. Jeremy ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 10:54 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-1.png (1.29 KB) Imo the 'regions' are more than you guys name here.. FOr example I attached 2 screens which only shows you the regions.. What I think is that it should always be possible to have free names for the regions. No matter if i call - the region where my content appears in - 'content' or 'site items'.. See attached screens.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 10:56 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-2.png (1.39 KB) And the second... See these links: - http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-1.png - http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-2.png ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 17:22 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block-dynamic-regions2.patch (13.39 KB) Here's a revised patch implementing some of the ideas so far. I've used the theme engine - rather than individual themes - to generate the list of available regions. I know this isn't ideal, but e.g. for xtemplate it's at present the only option--no logic is possible in the individual theme. region is changed to a varchar field from the current tinyint. I've roughed in several regions--really just for demo purposes. More thought and work would be needed to refine them (e.g., styling, etc.). But this maybe moves the conversation forward. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 23:26 : Dries This patch enables different regions to be used. That is a good thing. The next question is: should we take into account that different themes could assign blocks to different regions? Lots of problems would be solved if (i) there could only be one active theme on a website or (ii) if all themes would have a common set of regions. (This "let users select their own theme"-thing is a left-over from the early days, except for WAP stuff maybe.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 23:37 : killes(a)www.drop.org Giving up multiple theme support would be a great thing. People could still select from multiple style sheets. WAP shoud not be a user preference setting, but automatically detected and redirected to a special site with a WAP theme. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 23:48 : adrian You would then lose the ability to make a special front page theme for use with the sections module, for instance. Also, currently styles exist in the same namespace as themes, and we would have to make more a distinction of styles vs templates (or themes), but I do think this could help simplify things. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 18:54 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block-dynamic-regions3.patch (15.69 KB) The main issue raised, if I'm understanding well: if a theme or theme engine is present that offers regions other than those available in the default theme, any blocks assigned to those regions will be invisible to most users. Here's a revised patch addressing the concern. I've added a test for each region to see whether it's also available in the current default theme. (Actually, I'm realizing as I write this, I've used the theme engine--so it would need to be updated to test first if an engine is being used.) In any case, any regions not available by default are starred, and a message text appears (only if necessary). If there's support for the approach, I'd be happy to finish the patch. Remaining work: * extend to work with non-engine themes * finalize base set of regions to implement * implement common region set in all core themes (for now I've only done xtemplate) * work on CSS display (how blocks in each region should look) This last point I'm not too confident on and would look for help/suggestions. Screenshot to come. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 18:56 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block_regions_message.png (12.34 KB) Screenshot showing starring of non-default regions plus message. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 19:19 : killes(a)www.drop.org I like that approach. +1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 19:23 : resmini My two cents. If this has to be done (and it should), better get rid of spatial definitions for areas such as left, right, top, bottom, etc. Use semantic names related to content and let the theme take care of their positioning interely. Also note that there in an ongoing debate in IA trying to build up a standard naming convention for page regions in a way that is semantically (and logically) correct. Just for the sake of it, you can check http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/archives/whats_in_a_name.html http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/archives/whats_in_a_name_pt2.html with follow-ups, including Eric Meyer's. There are more substantial contributes in the AIfIA web site, but I can't seem to find them now. I'll post a link or an abstract if I manage to. -- vector at exea dot it ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 20:15 : nedjo Good points, useful references. The default regions I'm thinking of are: 'banner' => t('banner'), 'left' => t('left sidebar'), 'right' => t('right sidebar'), 'body_top' => t('body top'), 'body_bottom' => t('body bottom'), 'footer' => t('footer') Perhaps "body" would be better as "content"? It would be easy enough to add in more regions, e.g., within the content (after title, after help, etc.) One issue is that many of these regions will already have rendered content. Should the blocks come before or after that other content? I've assumed after for banner and footer, while giving both options in body. In any case, refinements or suggestions would be great. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 20:56 : resmini Well, 'banner' => t('banner'), 'left' => t('left sidebar'), 'right' => t('right sidebar'), 'body_top' => t('body top'), 'body_bottom' => t('body bottom'), 'footer' => t('footer') The classic (as far as classic goes for something Web related) scheme comprises 5 spatial regions, much like stefan's http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-1.png with a left area mirroring the one called 'blocks'. Call them top, left, center, right, bottom. Variants usually exclude one or more of these, layout-wise. If we talk content (semantic) instead, things get a bit more complicated, as these spatial regions normally include more than one content-area. The top, for example, could include ad banners and the site's header, or the main menu. But these merge seamlessly with CSS definitions, which are definitely something that should get properly standardized (most of the errors / inconsistencies I'm encountering with Drupal today are related to this), but this is out of scope in this thread. What I somewhat object to the definitions above is that it mixes the two approaches. 'banner' is not spatial, is content, as it is the distinction between body top and bottom. If 'banner' goes there, it is 'top', whatever that might be. I designed a couple of web sites which had headers/logos/banners at the bottom of the page, and I'm not exactly the wildest designer you'll probably meet. And if we include body_top and _bottom, we should also add 'navigation', or 'menu' and some other content-related semantic region (impressum, or company_data, or whatever). I suggest that either we go along 'top' => t('banner'), 'left' => t('left sidebar'), 'center' => t('body'), 'right' => t('right sidebar'), 'bottom' => t('footer') or we dedicate some time to detailing what could possibly fit there semantically, which is perfectly possible without limiting design freedom or whatever, since the vocabulary is not infinite, but not something you do out of the blue. Please note that I understand t('something') to be an example, since such a layout only defines regions on the page, not semantic regions. My main content could fit nicely in the bottom region. As for the names for the regions, they are not important, as much as they are coherent and enforced. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 23:16 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions-final.png (2.39 KB) Maybe something like this??? But, I have to say that I _really_ liked the solution to split the 'content'-region into the 'content' and 'beneath content'.. I love that! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 00:20 : resmini Stefan, yes. That's basically what you can build if you stick with spatial, and this layout can generate quite an amount of (sane) layout variations even if you interpret it strictly (suppose a default) as <div id="header"> </div> <div id="left-bar"> </div> <div id="content"> </div> <div id="right-bar"> </div> <div id="footer"> </div> What you can do with this is left basically to the theme designers and their use of CSS, CSS-P or tables (brrr), but this could be an easy and proper way to identify macro-regions in which more accurate positioning happens at a more specific level. I'm all in favour of subsequent identification of sub-areas (top and bottom in body), but I don't think it would be a good idea to mix the different approaches I mentioned in my previous post. A site with lots of things going on or which is not just blogging surely has the need to use its content area in a wiser manner than just putting there 'content', the number of modules doing precisely this is more than proof, but that falls more in a 'Drupal definitive guide to semantics', in which CSS selectors are used or suggested strategically for such a scope. >From this point of view and for the sake of this thread, any unique area / div (#name) could (should?) be a target for blocks, and this in my opinion (*) would be the perfect solution, but I do not know if and how this is even remotely possible in the current Drupal. (*) It's quite late, local time, and it was a looong working day. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 00:38 : resmini Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions-final-variation.png (1.9 KB) Just to be clear, I add a variation of stefan's scheme that shows how this is *not* by any means positional, but spatial, or better relational. Use your CSS imagination to take out regions, reduce them to empty containers, enlarge them, make them taller, shorter, whatever. 5 regions, do what you like. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 00:44 : resmini Sorry, I forgot. And this is also why I'm not too keen on calling anything 'content'. If I enlarge my right region enough, why not put my content there? Shouldn't this be a theme-level concern? It's nothing serious, but if my center area is called 'center' (or something similar and more sexy), I won't confuse anybody. This is left, center, right: do with them what you prefer. Content in the bottom? Show me. If I call something 'content', I'm more than suggesting that content goes there, and only there. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 10:17 : stefan nagtegaal Resmini, maybe it is only me but I think that you are making a mistake in your way of thinking.. I get the feeling that you're mixing the 'regions' and 'divs'.. the 'regioins' should have meaningfull sentences, but the divs shouldn'thave.. As an example: $region_name => $content_body here we go: 'header' => $logo 'left sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'left') 'right sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'right') 'content' => $content 'footer' => $footer. So, $region_name does not have to be equal to the id or class of the divs.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 11:27 : resmini Stefan, >So, $region_name does not have to be equal to the id or class of the divs.. Yes, absolutely. I probably didn't make myself very clear: what I'm trying to point out is that in 'header' => $logo 'left sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'left') 'right sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'right') 'content' => $content 'footer' => $footer. there is no reason at all to call 'content' the region that holds $content. nedjo asked in #24 'body_top' => t('body top'), 'body_bottom' => t('body bottom'), if /Perhaps "body" would be better as "content"?/ and all my reasoning is simply that no, that is not content, or it shouldn't be (or better: it may happen that main content is elsewhere). As a matter of fact, even the connotation 'sidebar' doesn't fit very well logically. To make it short: Today's method works, but has limits. Mambo, which paragkenia quotes at the beginning, handles more 'user regions' but in pure Mambo style conventions are so loose that they are hardly useful. If we define regions, as in nedjo's example, in my opinion these regions shouldn't imply informational layouting, only relational positioning (that is, where they stay in the browser viewport). I know it may look like overdesigning, but Drupal constantly enforces conventions and coding guidelines everywhere: this is one of the best aspects of the project and I think it should carry to the layout. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 11:32 : stefan nagtegaal While I think that 'body_*' is not as self explaining as 'content_*' I vote for using 'content_*'.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 25, 2005 - 19:48 : chx Let's get back to the code. If my understanding is correct the big discussion is about how to name potiental rectangular areas _after_ this is commited. So, first get this committed. What's need to make that happen? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 25, 2005 - 20:56 : chx I spoke with Moshe, Steven, JonBob and the result is: keys shall be numbers, and themes shall define the values. We will make region zero and one required. There will be a define('REGION_CONTENT', 0) and a define('REGION_SIDEBAR', 1); so you can have readable code still. Either wait for me to code it or feel to do it yourself, just drop me a mail via the contact form if you are doing it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 27, 2005 - 18:14 : nedjo Károly, it's great if you're willing to take on finishing this. I tried to summarize remaining work in update 20, above [4]. The numerical keys look fine to me. In terms of an initial default set of regions, one quirk is this: for now, so far as I can see (and assuming the approach I sketched in), available regions can be defined only in (a) theme engines and (b) individual themes that don't use an engine. So, for instance, an individual xtemplate based theme can't define its own custom regions; they need to be defined in the theme engine. (Unless and until the whole theme system should switch to the sort of configuration file adrian suggested above [5].) Which is to say that, under this approach, we'll be defining a set of regions for each engine, and then all themes using that engine should try to implement those regions. (Otherwise, if a site admin selects a region defined in the engine but not implemented in the default theme, the content won't appear.) Please let me know if there's anything in what I've done that isn't clear, or if you want to pass some or all of this back. Thanks! [4] http://www.drupal.org/node/16216#comment-27398 [5] http://www.drupal.org/node/16216#comment-27052 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 9, 2005 - 22:36 : chx I had a "short" discussion with the UI team leader ie. Ber Kessels. The outcoming is that we will change hook_block so that it uses callbacks a bit like menu system. Here's an example: <?php function module_block() { $items = array(); $items['module_header'] = array('callback' => 'mymodule_page', 'weight' => -50, 'region' => 'content' , 'cache' => TRUE, 'pages' => "node/*\n<front>"); return $items; } ?> Please note that we are allowing caching the themed output of each block independently. The theme system will execute hook_block as it does now and it'll execute the callbacks defined in module_block as well. Of course if the callback is cacheable and in the cache, it'll print it from cache. If it's themeable and not in the cache, it'll cache it before printing. Pages contains a string (could be PHP code!) which can be overriden in the block configuration screen. Callbacks defined in hook_menu will have lot less functionality after this, they will be used for non-themed pages mainly. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 9, 2005 - 22:45 : chx More explanation is requested for the example. module_header is the unqiue name of the block. pages define on which pages the block is visible. ('pages' in the block configuration screen.) Maybe I'll implement 'visibility' from the same screen as well. callback, weight are well known Drupal terms. cache is a boolean which defines whether given output is cacheable or not. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 9, 2005 - 22:47 : chx Ber, Dries, do not kill me! Ber chaired the usability meeting in Antwerp, that's all. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 9, 2005 - 22:52 : Bèr Kessels Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/more_regions_principle.png (123.29 KB) attached is a schematic which might clarify this a little. And I would also like to comment on me being the UI leader: I do not consider myself any leader, no ofeence, though. Just to clarify that. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 00:42 : nedjo I am not opposed to the idea of changing the _block() hook to use callbacks (I have no opinion on it, not immediately grasping the need), but this seems quite distinct from the aim of enabling multiple and extensible regions. Why can't we just move ahead with the block generalization? I suggest: * quickly implement the proposed block region generalization, using only the two existing regions (i.e., implementing them in core themes) * later worry about: - adding further regions (the details of which are best done by those primarily responsible for the particular themes) - possible changes to the _block() hook. Wouldn't this make sense? Or am I missing some pressing reason for which the block generalization has to wait? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 03:28 : killes(a)www.drop.org "Or am I missing some pressing reason for which the block generalization has to wait?" I might be missing something too, but I thought Chx was just talking about the block generalization and proposing a way to code it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 04:41 : factoryjoe I wanted to chime in with this discussion because it's an important one and has some really huge implications for Drupal moving forward. That said, I also have a day job pulling all my attention which means that the big ideas I have for this problem can't be put into a complete visual form for at least a week or more. In the meantime, I'd like to offer a few thoughts on the matter. * *Regions do not belong in themes.* Blocks were originally separate from themes for a reason. Themes should define the general look and feel of a site -- and to some extent a site's behavior. Layouts which define the spatial relationship between regions belong in some intermediary between style and content, which does not currently exist in Drupal. * I would propose that *layouts become a new kind of CCK tool.* By that I mean that they can be defined, shared and deployed very easily -- even as simply as tossing a directory of some .layout textfiles into a layouts/ directory. Note that this suggestion has nothing to do with the way CCK /might actually/ work right now; instead I'm suggesting how I would like it to work. I would like, for example, to create a CCK item like a "person" and ship it with a .layout file that carries all the semantic goodness needed to output that "person" to the screen in juicy, semantic markup... which anyone can come along and theme to their heart's content. * *Creating shareable layouts should be relatively painless.* Dashboard [6] sets the bar for easy hackability. It should be that easy to create layouts for Drupal... I can imagine creating an "iTunes layout" or an "Image Gallery" layout and so on... If we used something akin to PHPTal to develop the layouts, we could keep development fairly standard while making it possible for more folks to hack up cool and innovative layouts. * *Layouts should be extensible.. to a degree.* I see a huge problem with how this discussion has floated back and forth between semantic and spatial region naming. Because we talk about this problem in those terms, we fail to identify the real problem and opportunities presented to us. Here's the thing: when you predefine regions, you limit creativity and the ability of people to really use the system. On the other hand, when you make a system too flexibile, it quickly becomes unwieldy. In all the mockups presented above, both classes of problems would arise. Therefore we need to think about a way to stay flexibile while "taming the beast." * To that end, I suggest developing *self-contained layouts that are contextually-complete.* So for the example of the iTunes search layout... you would know before hand that you get a couple multiple select boxes that you can hook up to whatever taxonomies you want to progressively filter [nodes]. You could even change the .layout file, allowing you to theme it to your liking -- even though that would totally optional, given the layout's internal default styling. Once you've got your layout, you would go into a layout module UI [7], create a new layout [8], select the layout from a list [9] and then give it a path so you can access the layout... You would then walk through a wizard [10] that would help you populate that layout with all kinds of nice Drupally goodies... feeds, node listings, PHP code, etc. The power in this approach is multifold. For one, it snaps Drupal out of its block mentality and allows designers to really innovate with individual page designs. In fact, I've already thought out how I could reimplement Flickr using this system, combined with Drupal's native feeds, taxonomy and menu module, and I'd barely break a sweat... sort of. ;) But anyway, this is a very productive conversation to be having, but I really think that we should consider whether the old paradigm, as such, really pushes Drupal as far forward as we have the opportunity to go. [6] http://drupal.org/apple.com/macosx/theater/dashboard.html [7] http://photos4.flickr.com/6944826_90af237c99_o.png [8] http://www.factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/new.html [9] http://www.factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/new_layout.html [10] http://www.factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/testing_add.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 06:34 : chx While factoryjoe may be right, I could be right as well. Regions has definitely something to do with themes, after all it's the theme that renders the page, and it can only render regions that it knows of. So, instead of postponing this into the far future when someone comes out with a layout system, I code this now. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 07:22 : Dries The proposed 'weight', 'region' and 'pages' would be configurable, not? Are these just defaults? The 'callback' and 'cache' options are nice to have. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 07:25 : chx Yes, blocks can provide a default for everything on the block and and configuration screen. Of course, you can override these in the UI. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 11:02 : Bèr Kessels Dries: yes, the region, weight and pages will be configurable from an admin interface. What we tried to address here, is a method for developers to choose good defaults. Take for example "logo". that should be enabled by default in a regions called header, rendered on all pages, and have a very light weight. We should not force an admin to visit the blocks admin before she can see or use the logo. Chris: I do not know if you have ever tried typo3. Its concept is some form of builder system. I do not like thar, because far too complex. If we ever get sme kind of builder in core (if ever) it will require a lot of work, and even more usability research. So for now such a builder is far out of our reach. Lets aim at goals that are more realistic ;) So: it does belong in themes, its the best place that is still realistic. I do like your visions, Chris, but I hope you agree they are not realistic, yet. So, maybe you can think of a path towards your visions, ow we can reach such a builder-system, you describe? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 16:52 : factoryjoe My browser crashed before I was able to submit my followup to chx's comment... I have no problem with the current work going forward and am happy to see it happening. I know that my ideas are typically outlandlish and far off... That's the kind of design I enjoy doing! In any case, I see chx's solution being a means to an end; once we have abstracted the region code, it become much easier for me to get some help creating my vision. In the meantime, and as a demonstration of how I see this layout system working (to answer, I hope, Ber's concerns about clunkiness), I've created a workflow movie that shows off how fast you'd be able to add content to the system. Check it out: http://factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/media/layout_workflow_v1.mov Feedback appreciated. And, if you want to try the demo out yourself (it's all hardcoded, like a "movie set" for my UI), go here: http://factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 18:45 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block-dynamic-regions4.patch (13.56 KB) "I might be missing something too, but I thought Chx was just talking about the block generalization and proposing a way to code it. " Well, if I can say so respectfully, I don't think so. Not so far as I can see identifying problems with my original patch, this interesting discussion is rather addressing the (useful, but logically subsequent) question "once we have multiple regions, how should we work with them?". It's perhaps demonstrating our propensity to try to do more rather than less with a given patch--to talk for a long time when a first step solution is already in place. So here is a (yes, interim!) small, focused, and tested patch to remove the hard-coded regions. I've stripped it down so it does nothing more than (a) make block regions declared by themes rather than hard-coded and (b) implement the existing left and right regions in existing core themes. Please, try it out, I think you'll like it. I'm of the (I'm hoping not scandalous) opinion that it can be applied right away, and so clear the way for further progress. In particular, this patch leaves the adding and configuring of additional regions to theme authors/maintainers, who are best qualified for the work. "I spoke with Moshe, Steven, JonBob and the result is: keys shall be numbers, and themes shall define the values. We will make region zero and one required. " The reason I moved from numbers to strings (e.g., "left") is that a theme author defining regions has no way of knowing what regions might have already been defined, and therefore what integers might have aleady been used. It's like module and theme names--we'd have to use random numbers to avoid conflicts, so we're better off with string names. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 20:17 : Bèr Kessels nedjo, I am not a fan of your solution for blocks that dissapear. It breaks the ability to allow more themes on a site. if important blocks dont show up, your site will simply break. I would rather suggest that every theme MUST have a region called 'default'. any blocks that want to go into a non-existing region, will be placed there. We must define a standard listy of suggested region names. to avoid a wildgrowth of names. I am not sure if i like the way you do function phptemplate_regions(). these regions should be defined in the templqtes, not the engine. Otherwise all phptemplate themes will still all have two regions. Note that i did not test your patch thouroughly, just applied and looked at. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 21:38 : nedjo Thanks for your comments. I think we're getting somewhere. "I am not a fan of your solution for blocks that dissapear. It breaks the ability to allow more themes on a site. if important blocks dont show up, your site will simply break. I would rather suggest that every theme MUST have a region called 'default'. any blocks that want to go into a non-existing region, will be placed there. " Good suggestion. Having a default region for blocks to show up sounds like a valuable backup. I'm thinking we might want to have a way to designate a given region as the default, rather than having to have one named 'default'. Thoughts? "We must define a standard listy of suggested region names. to avoid a wildgrowth of names. " Sure. But the patch doesn't prevent doing that--it enables it. "I am not sure if i like the way you do function phptemplate_regions(). these regions should be defined in the templqtes, not the engine. Otherwise all phptemplate themes will still all have two regions. " Oh, I wholeheartedly agree, and I've noted the issue above. But unless we substantially rewrite the engines, some region definition is needed in the engines, as they call blocks. Should we therefore define a base set in the engine, then call a hook from the engine to add any other regions from themes based on that engine? If so, where in the theme's files should such a hook be located? And a side note. Do let's make an effort to keep our comments friendly. Taking the time to note one or two things that do work or are done well as part of a review is I believe a valuable habit. It helps to confirm what is indeed accomplished. Beyond this, it helps to maintain the idea that we are collaborating on shared goals, rather than pushing individual and competing visions, and that contributions and work are appreciated, rather than being invitations to criticism. Thanks, Nedjo ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 21:42 : chx I am implementing http://drupal.org/node/16216#comment-29282 but it takes time. regions again have names. default and sidebar regions are mandatory. This has little to do with nedjo's code much more with his idea -- I looked at the screenshot and said, OK this is great but... we'd like to have a lot more 'blocks' if this comes through, henceforth the above mentioned solution. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 22:39 : nedjo Okay, thanks for the clarification, I hadn't understood that you were taking a new approach rather than building on what I'd begun. Given that that's the case, staging as I'd suggested obviously won't work so I'm content to wait and see what you accomplish. I'd only suggest, don't feel like you need necessarily to do everything all at once. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 13, 2005 - 10:34 : Bèr Kessels Nedjo, sorry if the sound of my comment was hostile. it was never meant to be that way. I am busy, and thus did not want to comment all the things i liked about your patch, but chose to pick the much smaller amount of things I thought could use some improvement. I will try to keep in mind to be more friendly next times. Also, not all of us are as fluent in English as our native English speakers. I think its good to keep in mind that for a lot of us, communication in English is not as easy as it may seem. For me, it often requires a lot of concentration to get the subtleties right. I mean: I can type some English text, look up words in the dictionary, but to get small yet important subtleties in my texts is very hard, often. But, that all said: I liked your patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 10, 2005 - 13:08 : jakeg How far off is this from being officially released or at least usable? If its usable now, what files will I need to implement it? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 10, 2005 - 14:19 : Kobus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-3.png (2.21 KB) To add to Stefan's suggestions with the two screenshots, I modified one of them a bit, and this is how I understand Jaza's post, and yes, I agree, this would be a wonderful feature! I can't wait! Imagine how good it would look if I had a theme that has a clear white background (not visible blocks) and then these seemingly random boxes on the page, as shown in the screenshot. Especially where I can place it anywhere around the node like Jaza said with a [region:2] block etc. I say again: I can't wait! Kobus ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 10, 2005 - 15:59 : chx I need 3-4 hrs of peace to implement the callback based thing. That's a lot these days. Let's hope I'll get on it in the following days. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 19, 2005 - 00:32 : chx Here's an example again of how hook_block will look like: <?php function module_block() { $items = array(); $items['module_header'] = array('callback' => 'mymodule_function', 'callback arguments' => arg(1), 'weight' => -50, 'region' => 'content', 'cache' => TRUE, ''pages' => "node/*\n<front>"); return $items; } ?> Items are keyed by unique IDs. The template system will call module_invoke_all('block'), put the rendered HTML of the blocks into regions sorted by weight. The rendered HTML is cached if it is allowed. More keys will be introduced later, but now basically we just throw everything from block configure in here, and add callback, callback arguments, region. Node teasers or fullly rendered nodes are blocks, too. Almost everything is. So, here what happens when we are on taxonomy/term/1: taxonomy_render_nodes is called it calls block_set('node_view', $weight, $node, $teaser, $page); a few times, so a few node_view blocks will be on the page later the theme system is invoked. It will ask the block system to collect all blocks, dynamic and the static blocks as well. For all dynamic blocks we have a block defined in hook_block somewhere, like the definition above, with one exception: it will have a 'standalone' => FALSE pair, so it is not a standalone block which is automatically rendered but something that needs to explicitely requested. Also, we may define a 'suffix' => 'somefunction' pair which provides us with a cache ID suffix. Look at the code below: <?php function block_collect_blocks() { // get all block definitions $static_blocks = module_invoke_all('block'); // iterate of the dynamic blocks set on the page foreach (block_get() as $dynamic_block) { // get the block definition for the given dynamic block $static_block = $static_blocks[$dynamic_block['block']]; // merge the callback arguments from the dynamic and static. dynamic_block['callback arguments'] is always set though // may be empty if (isset($static_block['callback arguments'])) { $dynamic_block['callback arguments'] = array_merge($static_block['arguments'], $dynamic_block['callback arguments']); } // try to get a cache ID suffix $suffix = function_exists($static_block['suffix']) && call_user_func_array($static_block['suffix'], $dynamic_block['callback arguments']); // if the block is cacheable or the suffix function says that it is cacheable by setting a suffix if ($static_block['cache'] || $suffix) { // set cache ID $cid = 'block:'. $dynamic_block['block'] .':'. $suffix; // try to get the rendered HTML from cache if ($block_rendered = cache_get($cid)) { $return[$static_block['region'][$dynamic_block['weight']][] = $static_block_rendered; continue; } } // render the block $block_rendered = call_user_func_array($static_block['callback'], $dynamic_block['callback arguments']); // store the block for return $return[$static_block['region'][$dynamic_block['weight']][] = $static_block_rendered; if ($static_block['cache'] || $suffix) { // if cacheable, do it cache_set($cid, $static_block_rendered); } } foreach ($static_blocks as $key => $static_block) { // is this a stand alone block, like in Drupal 4.6? if ($static_block['standalone']) { // now, the above is repeated, save that we do not have a dynamic_block here $suffix = function_exists($static_block['suffix']) && call_user_func_array($static_block['suffix'], $static_block['callback arguments']); if ($static_block['cache'] || $suffix) { $cid = "block:$key:$suffix"; if ($block_rendered = cache_get($cid)) { $return[$static_block['region'][$static_block['weight']][] = $static_block_rendered; continue; } } $block_rendered = call_user_func_array($static_block['callback'], $static_block['callback arguments']); $return[$static_block['region']][$static_block['weight']][] = $static_block_rendered; if ($static_block['cache'] || $suffix) { cache_set($cid, $static_block_rendered); } } } } function block_set() { static $blocks; $args = func_get_args(); if (count($args)) { $callback = array_shift($args); $weight = array_shift($args); $blocks[] = array('block' => $function, 'weight' => $weight, 'callback arguments' => $args); } return $blocks; } function block_get() { return block_set(); } ?> When to expire the block cache? Never. If functions can call cache_clear all, they can be smart enough to cache_clear only those blocks that are changed by them. Some blocks won't be cacheable anyways, say there is little use in caching 'active forum topics'

1 0

[drupal-devel] [feature] Enable multiple block regions (not just "left" and "right" sidebars)
by chx 19 Jun '05

19 Jun '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/16216 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: block.module Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: paragkenia Updated by: chx Status: patch Here's an example again of how hook_block will look like: <?php function module_block() { $items = array(); $items['module_header'] = array('callback' => 'mymodule_function', 'callback arguments' => arg(1), 'weight' => -50, 'region' => 'content', 'cache' => TRUE, ''pages' => "node/*\n<front>"); return $items; } ?> Items are keyed by unique IDs. The template system will call module_invoke_all('block'), put the rendered HTML of the blocks into regions sorted by weight. The rendered HTML is cached if it is allowed. More keys will be introduced later, but now basically we just throw everything from block configure in here, and add callback, callback arguments, region. Node teasers or fullly rendered nodes are blocks, too. Almost everything is. So, here what happens when we are on taxonomy/term/1: taxonomy_render_nodes is called it calls block_set('node_view', $weight, $node, $teaser, $page); a few times, so a few node_view blocks will be on the page later the theme system is invoked. It will ask the block system to collect all blocks, dynamic and the static blocks as well. For all dynamic blocks we have a block defined in hook_block somewhere, like the definition above, with one exception: it will have a 'standalone' => FALSE pair, so it is not a standalone block which is automatically rendered but something that needs to explicitely requested. Also, we may define a 'suffix' => 'somefunction' pair which provides us with a cache ID suffix. Look at the code below: <?php function block_collect_blocks() { // get all block definitions $static_blocks = module_invoke_all('block'); // iterate of the dynamic blocks set on the page foreach (block_get() as $dynamic_block) { // get the block definition for the given dynamic block $static_block = $static_blocks[$dynamic_block['block']]; // merge the callback arguments from the dynamic and static. dynamic_block['callback arguments'] is always set though // may be empty if (isset($static_block['callback arguments'])) { $dynamic_block['callback arguments'] = array_merge($static_block['arguments'], $dynamic_block['callback arguments']); } // try to get a cache ID suffix $suffix = function_exists($static_block['suffix']) && call_user_func_array($static_block['suffix'], $dynamic_block['callback arguments']); // if the block is cacheable or the suffix function says that it is cacheable by setting a suffix if ($static_block['cache'] || $suffix) { // set cache ID $cid = 'block:'. $dynamic_block['block'] .':'. $suffix; // try to get the rendered HTML from cache if ($block_rendered = cache_get($cid)) { $return[$static_block['region'][$dynamic_block['weight']][] = $static_block_rendered; continue; } } // render the block $block_rendered = call_user_func_array($static_block['callback'], $dynamic_block['callback arguments']); // store the block for return $return[$static_block['region'][$dynamic_block['weight']][] = $static_block_rendered; if ($static_block['cache'] || $suffix) { // if cacheable, do it cache_set($cid, $static_block_rendered); } } foreach ($static_blocks as $key => $static_block) { // is this a stand alone block, like in Drupal 4.6? if ($static_block['standalone']) { // now, the above is repeated, save that we do not have a dynamic_block here $suffix = function_exists($static_block['suffix']) && call_user_func_array($static_block['suffix'], $static_block['callback arguments']); if ($static_block['cache'] || $suffix) { $cid = "block:$key:$suffix"; if ($block_rendered = cache_get($cid)) { $return[$static_block['region'][$static_block['weight']][] = $static_block_rendered; continue; } } $block_rendered = call_user_func_array($static_block['callback'], $static_block['callback arguments']); $return[$static_block['region']][$static_block['weight']][] = $static_block_rendered; if ($static_block['cache'] || $suffix) { cache_set($cid, $static_block_rendered); } } } } function block_set() { static $blocks; $args = func_get_args(); if (count($args)) { $callback = array_shift($args); $weight = array_shift($args); $blocks[] = array('block' => $function, 'weight' => $weight, 'callback arguments' => $args); } return $blocks; } function block_get() { return block_set(); } ?> When to expire the block cache? Never. If functions can call cache_clear all, they can be smart enough to cache_clear only those blocks that are changed by them. Some blocks won't be cacheable anyways, say there is little use in caching 'active forum topics' chx Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 26, 2005 - 12:27 : paragkenia I read the comparision discussion between *Drupal* and *Mambo*. In several messages it was outlined that Drupal can place blocks only in right and left and not flexible to put them on anywhere where one want. It will be great if this can be changed in upcoming versions. I am no pro at PHP, so don't know how much time this task will take, but I think it is very important. parag ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 15, 2005 - 03:44 : nedjo This issue was apparently partially addressed in issue http://drupal.org/node/19694 [1]. [1] http://drupal.org/node/19694 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 02:24 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block-dynamic-regions.patch (8.17 KB) This much-requested functionality - to have the ability to place blocks in more than the two predefined regions - was partially addressed in issue http://drupal.org/node/19694. [2]. But "blocks" are still limited to the "left" and "right" sidebars (hard-coded in block.module). This patch is a first step designed to enable multiple (eventually, admin-definable) regions for blocks. I've moved the existing "left" and "right" block regions to a 'region' table (with ids of 0 and 1, as currently used in themes). Then all references to the regions are drawn dynamically from the table. This way, if further records are added, they will appear in the list of available regions for block placement. Doing this actually reduces some duplicated code, since it's no longer necessary to repeat code blocks for each of "left" and "right". As it stands, the patch doesn't add any new functionality--but I don't think it breaks anything either. New functionality would need (a) new regions defined, and (b) changes to themes. A simple first step might be, e.g., to add a "footer" region and then add a call in the footer generation to append any blocks assigned to the footer region there. I'm setting this to patch, but I'm aware that it needs some discussion and refining before it'll be ready to apply. [2] http://drupal.org/node/19694. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 03:05 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block_regions.png (5.65 KB) Here's a screenshot showing the block admin page, with drop-downs for region placement (the options are dynamically generated based on defined regions). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 04:57 : adrian The biggest problem with this is that you can have multiple themes, and each of these themes can have different regions available. Also, the method of defining which regions are available needs to be standardised. Some of the work that me and Vlado are working on for the install system would go towards solving that problem (ie: meta information for modules, themes and styles). This has been discussed to death, but the general consensus has been that we _want_ to do this, but we need to solve a few other problems properly first, the most pertinent being the interface issue. Chris (factoryjoe) recently did a whole mess of workflows for something related to this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 06:09 : syscrusher The first paragraph of adrian [3]'s post is a point that occurred to me also, as I read this thread. One suggestion would be to separate the definition and configuration of blocks, on one hand, from the placement of those blocks, on the other hand. In other words, Drupal core provides a mechanism defining what blocks exist, which of these are on by default or off by default and user-selectable vs. which are forced on for all users, and the configuration (if applicable) of specialized blocks defined by particular modules. Each theme provides a standard hook function that returns an array of region names and help/description text, e.g., array('left'=>t('This vertical region is left of the main content area'), 'right'=>t('This vertical region is right of the main content area'), 'footer'=>t('The footer is below the left, right, and main content areas of the page')). The theme part of Drupal core (i.e., theme.module itself, not the individual themes) provides a standard UI that is displayed within config of *each theme* (but is one physical code base within theme.module) that allows the administrator to map blocks defined by Drupal core into regions defined by the theme, and storing that mapping as an theme-to-block_ID-to-region_ID (with weight) table in the database. From there, the actual page rendering is similar to what's being done now, but there is more of it. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the key to solving this problem is breaking it along its degrees of orthogonality, and there are three -- two in Drupal core and one in the individual theme. Scott [3] http://drupal.org//user/1517 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 09:14 : Dries Scott, is right. The theme should export its available regions. Then the administrator's task is to assign blocks to regions (not to setup regions). A theme could have configurable regions, but that internal to the theme. To me, the real challenge is the UI and the interaction design. Configuring blocks could easily become a real pain (while most themes continue to use 'left' and 'right'.) Of course, we can implement all the functionality, default everything to 'left' and 'right', and worry about the UI later. This should be fairly straightforward to implement and nedjo's patch looks like a first step in the right direction. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 23:09 : nedjo I agree with the suggested approach of themes registering their regions. I'd see this happening when a particular theme is activiated (or upgraded). Regions would be an array of names (e.g., 'left', 'right', 'footer'). New records would be created in the region table only for region names not previously registered. Some areas I'm not clear on, or that need further work: * Table naming Should a new table be 'region' or 'regions' (I've used 'region')? I don't see a convention among existing table names, some of which are singular and others plural. * Default values I've kept the existing '0' and '1' ids for regions (left and right, respectively), for backward compatibility. But this means we can't use autoincrement for the region id (rid), since autoincrements seem to begin with 1. Likely we should change to autogenerated ids. * Initial records Using the INSERT INTO statements as I've done for the initial region entries is probably counterproductive, since sooner or later they'll have to be dynamically generated. I was hoping this could be a preliminary patch, with the main work coming later, but likely we need to solve region registration by themes before this patch is applied. I don't have a good idea of how region registration by themes would be implemented (a hook on theme activation?), and invite suggestions or implementations. * Theme system changes Besides region registration, the other change I'm seeing that would be needed in the theme system is loading blocks by region name, rather than region id. This is because the ids currently used ('0' and '1') in theory might be diffferent on a particular install. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 23:18 : syscrusher Instead of having themes "register" their regions, why not just add a theme API hook called them_regions() that returns an associative array of $region_name=>t($region_helptext)? This would be in keeping with other similar API functions, such as those that return what permissions apply to a module or what node types are defined by a module. Most themes are going to define only a small number of regions (two being the typical case now, but I could see five or six in a complex theme), so returning a constant array will be faster than querying SQL to obtain an array of rows. There could be (optionally, at the discretion of whoever builds this thing) another API hook like theme_region_properties($region_name) that returns an associative array with detailed info for a given region, such as extended help text with recommended usage instructions for the region. Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 23:19 : syscrusher s/them_regions/theme_regions/g ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 00:47 : adrian Because. The most common 'theme' is a phptemplate theme. And there needs to be a generic method for specifying the regions available, in a non hook_function format.. Themes get their names from the directory in which they are contained.. when copying the theme to another directory, there must be _no_ modifications necessary to allow normal usage. This is one of the tenets of the new template system I designed. You would need a standard way to define meta-information for themes, that does not need to be modified when copied to a new directory. We are working on this in the install system work, as you need a way external of Drupal to define the module dependencies and some other things. My approach would be to add a theme.dsc text file to the directory, which would allow you to specify meta-information. For instance : ---- regions: left, right, footer, center, mountie author: Johnny McAngstyPants ---- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 04:00 : syscrusher Adrian wrote: " Themes get their names from the directory in which they are contained.. when copying the theme to another directory, there must be _no_ modifications necessary to allow normal usage. This is one of the tenets of the new template system I designed. " A very good point. But region names don't have to be unique across different themes, so my hook function wouldn't have to be modified. The suggestion I made for the mapping metadata was three factors: theme ID or name, region ID or name, and block ID (plus one non-key weight value to order the blocks within a region, but this is not relevant here). I'm not familiar enough with PHP template to be able to respond to your comments on that one, so if you say it's not feasible to work with my schema, then I'll take your word for it. :-) Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 04:03 : syscrusher Oh, wait.....I see now what you mean! It's not the output of the function that is the problem, but the *name* of the function. Never mind. I concede your point. Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 09:44 : Jaza I'm probably jumping ahead a bit here... but something that this patch will have to eventually account for, is how to allow regions to be defined as inline. Allowing a theme to define a region's position as being anywhere on the edge of the page (i.e. top, left, right, bottom, corners, etc) is relatively easy. But what about having a region that's in the middle of a node's body, or somewhere else that's not the edge of the page? What I'm thinking of, is eventually allowing the custom region system to integrate with the CCK. Like I said, I admit that I'm jumping ahead into the future - the CCK still has a long way to go before it's ready. But ultimately, it would be cool if a theme could define a region as being after, say, the "rating" field in nodes of type "movie review". This would make the region (and the blocks in it) truly inline and in context with the actual content of the node. This would be a huge step forward compared to the current block system, which doesn't allow you to mix the presentation of blocks and nodes at all. In Drupal ATM, blocks and "the rest of the page" are totally separate, and really you have no choice but to display them as such. The result of this is that information in blocks that really should be displayed as part of a node, gets literally "pushed to the side", and always seems secondary to the actual content. Often the block has content that is just as important as the content of the node itself. Another option (of less merit, IMO - because of the extra maintenance work, and lack of enforced consistency) would be to have a region filter. You could then choose where to place an inline region on a per-node basis, by entering text such as [region:2] (example based on image_filter syntax) into the node body. Anyway, just thought I'd throw that idea into the open. I don't expect it will be implemented any time soon, but it's something to think about. Jeremy ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 10:54 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-1.png (1.29 KB) Imo the 'regions' are more than you guys name here.. FOr example I attached 2 screens which only shows you the regions.. What I think is that it should always be possible to have free names for the regions. No matter if i call - the region where my content appears in - 'content' or 'site items'.. See attached screens.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 10:56 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-2.png (1.39 KB) And the second... See these links: - http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-1.png - http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-2.png ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 17:22 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block-dynamic-regions2.patch (13.39 KB) Here's a revised patch implementing some of the ideas so far. I've used the theme engine - rather than individual themes - to generate the list of available regions. I know this isn't ideal, but e.g. for xtemplate it's at present the only option--no logic is possible in the individual theme. region is changed to a varchar field from the current tinyint. I've roughed in several regions--really just for demo purposes. More thought and work would be needed to refine them (e.g., styling, etc.). But this maybe moves the conversation forward. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 23:26 : Dries This patch enables different regions to be used. That is a good thing. The next question is: should we take into account that different themes could assign blocks to different regions? Lots of problems would be solved if (i) there could only be one active theme on a website or (ii) if all themes would have a common set of regions. (This "let users select their own theme"-thing is a left-over from the early days, except for WAP stuff maybe.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 23:37 : killes(a)www.drop.org Giving up multiple theme support would be a great thing. People could still select from multiple style sheets. WAP shoud not be a user preference setting, but automatically detected and redirected to a special site with a WAP theme. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 23:48 : adrian You would then lose the ability to make a special front page theme for use with the sections module, for instance. Also, currently styles exist in the same namespace as themes, and we would have to make more a distinction of styles vs templates (or themes), but I do think this could help simplify things. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 18:54 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block-dynamic-regions3.patch (15.69 KB) The main issue raised, if I'm understanding well: if a theme or theme engine is present that offers regions other than those available in the default theme, any blocks assigned to those regions will be invisible to most users. Here's a revised patch addressing the concern. I've added a test for each region to see whether it's also available in the current default theme. (Actually, I'm realizing as I write this, I've used the theme engine--so it would need to be updated to test first if an engine is being used.) In any case, any regions not available by default are starred, and a message text appears (only if necessary). If there's support for the approach, I'd be happy to finish the patch. Remaining work: * extend to work with non-engine themes * finalize base set of regions to implement * implement common region set in all core themes (for now I've only done xtemplate) * work on CSS display (how blocks in each region should look) This last point I'm not too confident on and would look for help/suggestions. Screenshot to come. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 18:56 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block_regions_message.png (12.34 KB) Screenshot showing starring of non-default regions plus message. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 19:19 : killes(a)www.drop.org I like that approach. +1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 19:23 : resmini My two cents. If this has to be done (and it should), better get rid of spatial definitions for areas such as left, right, top, bottom, etc. Use semantic names related to content and let the theme take care of their positioning interely. Also note that there in an ongoing debate in IA trying to build up a standard naming convention for page regions in a way that is semantically (and logically) correct. Just for the sake of it, you can check http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/archives/whats_in_a_name.html http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/archives/whats_in_a_name_pt2.html with follow-ups, including Eric Meyer's. There are more substantial contributes in the AIfIA web site, but I can't seem to find them now. I'll post a link or an abstract if I manage to. -- vector at exea dot it ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 20:15 : nedjo Good points, useful references. The default regions I'm thinking of are: 'banner' => t('banner'), 'left' => t('left sidebar'), 'right' => t('right sidebar'), 'body_top' => t('body top'), 'body_bottom' => t('body bottom'), 'footer' => t('footer') Perhaps "body" would be better as "content"? It would be easy enough to add in more regions, e.g., within the content (after title, after help, etc.) One issue is that many of these regions will already have rendered content. Should the blocks come before or after that other content? I've assumed after for banner and footer, while giving both options in body. In any case, refinements or suggestions would be great. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 20:56 : resmini Well, 'banner' => t('banner'), 'left' => t('left sidebar'), 'right' => t('right sidebar'), 'body_top' => t('body top'), 'body_bottom' => t('body bottom'), 'footer' => t('footer') The classic (as far as classic goes for something Web related) scheme comprises 5 spatial regions, much like stefan's http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-1.png with a left area mirroring the one called 'blocks'. Call them top, left, center, right, bottom. Variants usually exclude one or more of these, layout-wise. If we talk content (semantic) instead, things get a bit more complicated, as these spatial regions normally include more than one content-area. The top, for example, could include ad banners and the site's header, or the main menu. But these merge seamlessly with CSS definitions, which are definitely something that should get properly standardized (most of the errors / inconsistencies I'm encountering with Drupal today are related to this), but this is out of scope in this thread. What I somewhat object to the definitions above is that it mixes the two approaches. 'banner' is not spatial, is content, as it is the distinction between body top and bottom. If 'banner' goes there, it is 'top', whatever that might be. I designed a couple of web sites which had headers/logos/banners at the bottom of the page, and I'm not exactly the wildest designer you'll probably meet. And if we include body_top and _bottom, we should also add 'navigation', or 'menu' and some other content-related semantic region (impressum, or company_data, or whatever). I suggest that either we go along 'top' => t('banner'), 'left' => t('left sidebar'), 'center' => t('body'), 'right' => t('right sidebar'), 'bottom' => t('footer') or we dedicate some time to detailing what could possibly fit there semantically, which is perfectly possible without limiting design freedom or whatever, since the vocabulary is not infinite, but not something you do out of the blue. Please note that I understand t('something') to be an example, since such a layout only defines regions on the page, not semantic regions. My main content could fit nicely in the bottom region. As for the names for the regions, they are not important, as much as they are coherent and enforced. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 23:16 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions-final.png (2.39 KB) Maybe something like this??? But, I have to say that I _really_ liked the solution to split the 'content'-region into the 'content' and 'beneath content'.. I love that! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 00:20 : resmini Stefan, yes. That's basically what you can build if you stick with spatial, and this layout can generate quite an amount of (sane) layout variations even if you interpret it strictly (suppose a default) as <div id="header"> </div> <div id="left-bar"> </div> <div id="content"> </div> <div id="right-bar"> </div> <div id="footer"> </div> What you can do with this is left basically to the theme designers and their use of CSS, CSS-P or tables (brrr), but this could be an easy and proper way to identify macro-regions in which more accurate positioning happens at a more specific level. I'm all in favour of subsequent identification of sub-areas (top and bottom in body), but I don't think it would be a good idea to mix the different approaches I mentioned in my previous post. A site with lots of things going on or which is not just blogging surely has the need to use its content area in a wiser manner than just putting there 'content', the number of modules doing precisely this is more than proof, but that falls more in a 'Drupal definitive guide to semantics', in which CSS selectors are used or suggested strategically for such a scope. >From this point of view and for the sake of this thread, any unique area / div (#name) could (should?) be a target for blocks, and this in my opinion (*) would be the perfect solution, but I do not know if and how this is even remotely possible in the current Drupal. (*) It's quite late, local time, and it was a looong working day. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 00:38 : resmini Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions-final-variation.png (1.9 KB) Just to be clear, I add a variation of stefan's scheme that shows how this is *not* by any means positional, but spatial, or better relational. Use your CSS imagination to take out regions, reduce them to empty containers, enlarge them, make them taller, shorter, whatever. 5 regions, do what you like. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 00:44 : resmini Sorry, I forgot. And this is also why I'm not too keen on calling anything 'content'. If I enlarge my right region enough, why not put my content there? Shouldn't this be a theme-level concern? It's nothing serious, but if my center area is called 'center' (or something similar and more sexy), I won't confuse anybody. This is left, center, right: do with them what you prefer. Content in the bottom? Show me. If I call something 'content', I'm more than suggesting that content goes there, and only there. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 10:17 : stefan nagtegaal Resmini, maybe it is only me but I think that you are making a mistake in your way of thinking.. I get the feeling that you're mixing the 'regions' and 'divs'.. the 'regioins' should have meaningfull sentences, but the divs shouldn'thave.. As an example: $region_name => $content_body here we go: 'header' => $logo 'left sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'left') 'right sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'right') 'content' => $content 'footer' => $footer. So, $region_name does not have to be equal to the id or class of the divs.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 11:27 : resmini Stefan, >So, $region_name does not have to be equal to the id or class of the divs.. Yes, absolutely. I probably didn't make myself very clear: what I'm trying to point out is that in 'header' => $logo 'left sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'left') 'right sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'right') 'content' => $content 'footer' => $footer. there is no reason at all to call 'content' the region that holds $content. nedjo asked in #24 'body_top' => t('body top'), 'body_bottom' => t('body bottom'), if /Perhaps "body" would be better as "content"?/ and all my reasoning is simply that no, that is not content, or it shouldn't be (or better: it may happen that main content is elsewhere). As a matter of fact, even the connotation 'sidebar' doesn't fit very well logically. To make it short: Today's method works, but has limits. Mambo, which paragkenia quotes at the beginning, handles more 'user regions' but in pure Mambo style conventions are so loose that they are hardly useful. If we define regions, as in nedjo's example, in my opinion these regions shouldn't imply informational layouting, only relational positioning (that is, where they stay in the browser viewport). I know it may look like overdesigning, but Drupal constantly enforces conventions and coding guidelines everywhere: this is one of the best aspects of the project and I think it should carry to the layout. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 11:32 : stefan nagtegaal While I think that 'body_*' is not as self explaining as 'content_*' I vote for using 'content_*'.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 25, 2005 - 19:48 : chx Let's get back to the code. If my understanding is correct the big discussion is about how to name potiental rectangular areas _after_ this is commited. So, first get this committed. What's need to make that happen? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 25, 2005 - 20:56 : chx I spoke with Moshe, Steven, JonBob and the result is: keys shall be numbers, and themes shall define the values. We will make region zero and one required. There will be a define('REGION_CONTENT', 0) and a define('REGION_SIDEBAR', 1); so you can have readable code still. Either wait for me to code it or feel to do it yourself, just drop me a mail via the contact form if you are doing it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 27, 2005 - 18:14 : nedjo Károly, it's great if you're willing to take on finishing this. I tried to summarize remaining work in update 20, above [4]. The numerical keys look fine to me. In terms of an initial default set of regions, one quirk is this: for now, so far as I can see (and assuming the approach I sketched in), available regions can be defined only in (a) theme engines and (b) individual themes that don't use an engine. So, for instance, an individual xtemplate based theme can't define its own custom regions; they need to be defined in the theme engine. (Unless and until the whole theme system should switch to the sort of configuration file adrian suggested above [5].) Which is to say that, under this approach, we'll be defining a set of regions for each engine, and then all themes using that engine should try to implement those regions. (Otherwise, if a site admin selects a region defined in the engine but not implemented in the default theme, the content won't appear.) Please let me know if there's anything in what I've done that isn't clear, or if you want to pass some or all of this back. Thanks! [4] http://www.drupal.org/node/16216#comment-27398 [5] http://www.drupal.org/node/16216#comment-27052 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 9, 2005 - 22:36 : chx I had a "short" discussion with the UI team leader ie. Ber Kessels. The outcoming is that we will change hook_block so that it uses callbacks a bit like menu system. Here's an example: <?php function module_block() { $items = array(); $items['module_header'] = array('callback' => 'mymodule_page', 'weight' => -50, 'region' => 'content' , 'cache' => TRUE, 'pages' => "node/*\n<front>"); return $items; } ?> Please note that we are allowing caching the themed output of each block independently. The theme system will execute hook_block as it does now and it'll execute the callbacks defined in module_block as well. Of course if the callback is cacheable and in the cache, it'll print it from cache. If it's themeable and not in the cache, it'll cache it before printing. Pages contains a string (could be PHP code!) which can be overriden in the block configuration screen. Callbacks defined in hook_menu will have lot less functionality after this, they will be used for non-themed pages mainly. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 9, 2005 - 22:45 : chx More explanation is requested for the example. module_header is the unqiue name of the block. pages define on which pages the block is visible. ('pages' in the block configuration screen.) Maybe I'll implement 'visibility' from the same screen as well. callback, weight are well known Drupal terms. cache is a boolean which defines whether given output is cacheable or not. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 9, 2005 - 22:47 : chx Ber, Dries, do not kill me! Ber chaired the usability meeting in Antwerp, that's all. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 9, 2005 - 22:52 : Bèr Kessels Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/more_regions_principle.png (123.29 KB) attached is a schematic which might clarify this a little. And I would also like to comment on me being the UI leader: I do not consider myself any leader, no ofeence, though. Just to clarify that. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 00:42 : nedjo I am not opposed to the idea of changing the _block() hook to use callbacks (I have no opinion on it, not immediately grasping the need), but this seems quite distinct from the aim of enabling multiple and extensible regions. Why can't we just move ahead with the block generalization? I suggest: * quickly implement the proposed block region generalization, using only the two existing regions (i.e., implementing them in core themes) * later worry about: - adding further regions (the details of which are best done by those primarily responsible for the particular themes) - possible changes to the _block() hook. Wouldn't this make sense? Or am I missing some pressing reason for which the block generalization has to wait? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 03:28 : killes(a)www.drop.org "Or am I missing some pressing reason for which the block generalization has to wait?" I might be missing something too, but I thought Chx was just talking about the block generalization and proposing a way to code it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 04:41 : factoryjoe I wanted to chime in with this discussion because it's an important one and has some really huge implications for Drupal moving forward. That said, I also have a day job pulling all my attention which means that the big ideas I have for this problem can't be put into a complete visual form for at least a week or more. In the meantime, I'd like to offer a few thoughts on the matter. * *Regions do not belong in themes.* Blocks were originally separate from themes for a reason. Themes should define the general look and feel of a site -- and to some extent a site's behavior. Layouts which define the spatial relationship between regions belong in some intermediary between style and content, which does not currently exist in Drupal. * I would propose that *layouts become a new kind of CCK tool.* By that I mean that they can be defined, shared and deployed very easily -- even as simply as tossing a directory of some .layout textfiles into a layouts/ directory. Note that this suggestion has nothing to do with the way CCK /might actually/ work right now; instead I'm suggesting how I would like it to work. I would like, for example, to create a CCK item like a "person" and ship it with a .layout file that carries all the semantic goodness needed to output that "person" to the screen in juicy, semantic markup... which anyone can come along and theme to their heart's content. * *Creating shareable layouts should be relatively painless.* Dashboard [6] sets the bar for easy hackability. It should be that easy to create layouts for Drupal... I can imagine creating an "iTunes layout" or an "Image Gallery" layout and so on... If we used something akin to PHPTal to develop the layouts, we could keep development fairly standard while making it possible for more folks to hack up cool and innovative layouts. * *Layouts should be extensible.. to a degree.* I see a huge problem with how this discussion has floated back and forth between semantic and spatial region naming. Because we talk about this problem in those terms, we fail to identify the real problem and opportunities presented to us. Here's the thing: when you predefine regions, you limit creativity and the ability of people to really use the system. On the other hand, when you make a system too flexibile, it quickly becomes unwieldy. In all the mockups presented above, both classes of problems would arise. Therefore we need to think about a way to stay flexibile while "taming the beast." * To that end, I suggest developing *self-contained layouts that are contextually-complete.* So for the example of the iTunes search layout... you would know before hand that you get a couple multiple select boxes that you can hook up to whatever taxonomies you want to progressively filter [nodes]. You could even change the .layout file, allowing you to theme it to your liking -- even though that would totally optional, given the layout's internal default styling. Once you've got your layout, you would go into a layout module UI [7], create a new layout [8], select the layout from a list [9] and then give it a path so you can access the layout... You would then walk through a wizard [10] that would help you populate that layout with all kinds of nice Drupally goodies... feeds, node listings, PHP code, etc. The power in this approach is multifold. For one, it snaps Drupal out of its block mentality and allows designers to really innovate with individual page designs. In fact, I've already thought out how I could reimplement Flickr using this system, combined with Drupal's native feeds, taxonomy and menu module, and I'd barely break a sweat... sort of. ;) But anyway, this is a very productive conversation to be having, but I really think that we should consider whether the old paradigm, as such, really pushes Drupal as far forward as we have the opportunity to go. [6] http://drupal.org/apple.com/macosx/theater/dashboard.html [7] http://photos4.flickr.com/6944826_90af237c99_o.png [8] http://www.factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/new.html [9] http://www.factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/new_layout.html [10] http://www.factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/testing_add.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 06:34 : chx While factoryjoe may be right, I could be right as well. Regions has definitely something to do with themes, after all it's the theme that renders the page, and it can only render regions that it knows of. So, instead of postponing this into the far future when someone comes out with a layout system, I code this now. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 07:22 : Dries The proposed 'weight', 'region' and 'pages' would be configurable, not? Are these just defaults? The 'callback' and 'cache' options are nice to have. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 07:25 : chx Yes, blocks can provide a default for everything on the block and and configuration screen. Of course, you can override these in the UI. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 11:02 : Bèr Kessels Dries: yes, the region, weight and pages will be configurable from an admin interface. What we tried to address here, is a method for developers to choose good defaults. Take for example "logo". that should be enabled by default in a regions called header, rendered on all pages, and have a very light weight. We should not force an admin to visit the blocks admin before she can see or use the logo. Chris: I do not know if you have ever tried typo3. Its concept is some form of builder system. I do not like thar, because far too complex. If we ever get sme kind of builder in core (if ever) it will require a lot of work, and even more usability research. So for now such a builder is far out of our reach. Lets aim at goals that are more realistic ;) So: it does belong in themes, its the best place that is still realistic. I do like your visions, Chris, but I hope you agree they are not realistic, yet. So, maybe you can think of a path towards your visions, ow we can reach such a builder-system, you describe? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2005 - 16:52 : factoryjoe My browser crashed before I was able to submit my followup to chx's comment... I have no problem with the current work going forward and am happy to see it happening. I know that my ideas are typically outlandlish and far off... That's the kind of design I enjoy doing! In any case, I see chx's solution being a means to an end; once we have abstracted the region code, it become much easier for me to get some help creating my vision. In the meantime, and as a demonstration of how I see this layout system working (to answer, I hope, Ber's concerns about clunkiness), I've created a workflow movie that shows off how fast you'd be able to add content to the system. Check it out: http://factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/media/layout_workflow_v1.mov Feedback appreciated. And, if you want to try the demo out yourself (it's all hardcoded, like a "movie set" for my UI), go here: http://factorycity.net/demos/civicspace/layout/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 18:45 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block-dynamic-regions4.patch (13.56 KB) "I might be missing something too, but I thought Chx was just talking about the block generalization and proposing a way to code it. " Well, if I can say so respectfully, I don't think so. Not so far as I can see identifying problems with my original patch, this interesting discussion is rather addressing the (useful, but logically subsequent) question "once we have multiple regions, how should we work with them?". It's perhaps demonstrating our propensity to try to do more rather than less with a given patch--to talk for a long time when a first step solution is already in place. So here is a (yes, interim!) small, focused, and tested patch to remove the hard-coded regions. I've stripped it down so it does nothing more than (a) make block regions declared by themes rather than hard-coded and (b) implement the existing left and right regions in existing core themes. Please, try it out, I think you'll like it. I'm of the (I'm hoping not scandalous) opinion that it can be applied right away, and so clear the way for further progress. In particular, this patch leaves the adding and configuring of additional regions to theme authors/maintainers, who are best qualified for the work. "I spoke with Moshe, Steven, JonBob and the result is: keys shall be numbers, and themes shall define the values. We will make region zero and one required. " The reason I moved from numbers to strings (e.g., "left") is that a theme author defining regions has no way of knowing what regions might have already been defined, and therefore what integers might have aleady been used. It's like module and theme names--we'd have to use random numbers to avoid conflicts, so we're better off with string names. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 20:17 : Bèr Kessels nedjo, I am not a fan of your solution for blocks that dissapear. It breaks the ability to allow more themes on a site. if important blocks dont show up, your site will simply break. I would rather suggest that every theme MUST have a region called 'default'. any blocks that want to go into a non-existing region, will be placed there. We must define a standard listy of suggested region names. to avoid a wildgrowth of names. I am not sure if i like the way you do function phptemplate_regions(). these regions should be defined in the templqtes, not the engine. Otherwise all phptemplate themes will still all have two regions. Note that i did not test your patch thouroughly, just applied and looked at. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 21:38 : nedjo Thanks for your comments. I think we're getting somewhere. "I am not a fan of your solution for blocks that dissapear. It breaks the ability to allow more themes on a site. if important blocks dont show up, your site will simply break. I would rather suggest that every theme MUST have a region called 'default'. any blocks that want to go into a non-existing region, will be placed there. " Good suggestion. Having a default region for blocks to show up sounds like a valuable backup. I'm thinking we might want to have a way to designate a given region as the default, rather than having to have one named 'default'. Thoughts? "We must define a standard listy of suggested region names. to avoid a wildgrowth of names. " Sure. But the patch doesn't prevent doing that--it enables it. "I am not sure if i like the way you do function phptemplate_regions(). these regions should be defined in the templqtes, not the engine. Otherwise all phptemplate themes will still all have two regions. " Oh, I wholeheartedly agree, and I've noted the issue above. But unless we substantially rewrite the engines, some region definition is needed in the engines, as they call blocks. Should we therefore define a base set in the engine, then call a hook from the engine to add any other regions from themes based on that engine? If so, where in the theme's files should such a hook be located? And a side note. Do let's make an effort to keep our comments friendly. Taking the time to note one or two things that do work or are done well as part of a review is I believe a valuable habit. It helps to confirm what is indeed accomplished. Beyond this, it helps to maintain the idea that we are collaborating on shared goals, rather than pushing individual and competing visions, and that contributions and work are appreciated, rather than being invitations to criticism. Thanks, Nedjo ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 21:42 : chx I am implementing http://drupal.org/node/16216#comment-29282 but it takes time. regions again have names. default and sidebar regions are mandatory. This has little to do with nedjo's code much more with his idea -- I looked at the screenshot and said, OK this is great but... we'd like to have a lot more 'blocks' if this comes through, henceforth the above mentioned solution. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 12, 2005 - 22:39 : nedjo Okay, thanks for the clarification, I hadn't understood that you were taking a new approach rather than building on what I'd begun. Given that that's the case, staging as I'd suggested obviously won't work so I'm content to wait and see what you accomplish. I'd only suggest, don't feel like you need necessarily to do everything all at once. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 13, 2005 - 10:34 : Bèr Kessels Nedjo, sorry if the sound of my comment was hostile. it was never meant to be that way. I am busy, and thus did not want to comment all the things i liked about your patch, but chose to pick the much smaller amount of things I thought could use some improvement. I will try to keep in mind to be more friendly next times. Also, not all of us are as fluent in English as our native English speakers. I think its good to keep in mind that for a lot of us, communication in English is not as easy as it may seem. For me, it often requires a lot of concentration to get the subtleties right. I mean: I can type some English text, look up words in the dictionary, but to get small yet important subtleties in my texts is very hard, often. But, that all said: I liked your patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 10, 2005 - 13:08 : jakeg How far off is this from being officially released or at least usable? If its usable now, what files will I need to implement it? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 10, 2005 - 14:19 : Kobus Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-3.png (2.21 KB) To add to Stefan's suggestions with the two screenshots, I modified one of them a bit, and this is how I understand Jaza's post, and yes, I agree, this would be a wonderful feature! I can't wait! Imagine how good it would look if I had a theme that has a clear white background (not visible blocks) and then these seemingly random boxes on the page, as shown in the screenshot. Especially where I can place it anywhere around the node like Jaza said with a [region:2] block etc. I say again: I can't wait! Kobus ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 10, 2005 - 15:59 : chx I need 3-4 hrs of peace to implement the callback based thing. That's a lot these days. Let's hope I'll get on it in the following days.

1 0

[drupal-devel] [feature] List of bloggers
by igrcic 19 Jun '05

19 Jun '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/17030 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: blog.module Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: Bèr Kessels Updated by: igrcic Status: patch Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/blog_bloggers_list_0.patch (1.75 KB) Sorry, here is a patch for a blog_bloggers_list_2_0.patch :) igrcic Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 8, 2005 - 23:27 : Bèr Kessels Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/blog_bloggers_list.patch (1.66 KB) Small patch to show a list of bloggers. We all should know that blog.module is not meant for personal blogging, but that set aside, we do not have a way to show all bloggers, on a site as a list. This patch ads a few lines that will allow you to show that overview of blogging users. It ads a menu item, disabled by default that shows such a list. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 8, 2005 - 23:31 : Bèr Kessels Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/blog_bloggers_list.png (4.02 KB) Here is a small screeny that shows what this is about. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 8, 2005 - 23:34 : Bèr Kessels Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/list_bloggers_2.png (2.25 KB) hmm. error in my png file. Here is a correct one. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 19, 2005 - 20:13 : Emiliano Hi Bèr Kessels! Thanks for the patch! It's really useful! :-) I just noticed what I think is a little mistake in this line: $items[] = l($row->name, 'blog/'.$row->uid)." ".theme('xml_icon', url('blog/'.$row->uid.'/feed'), TRUE); Which I believe should end like: $items[] = l($row->name, 'blog/'.$row->uid)." ".theme('xml_icon', url*('blog/feed/'.$row->uid)*, TRUE); Ah, and BTW, "db_rewrite_sql" didn't work for me... I just cut it off... ;-) Cheers, Emiliano. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 17, 2005 - 22:17 : Bèr Kessels Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/blog_bloggers_list_2.patch (1.81 KB) and here is the actual patch. (i think i really need some script that tells me i did not attach a patch ;) ) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 17, 2005 - 22:19 : Bèr Kessels Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/blog_bloggers_list_2_0.patch (1.71 KB) sigh. something tells me i should stop working.... a silly "F" sneaked into the previous patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 24, 2005 - 20:25 : Anonymous I applied the patch, reuploaded the blog.module and then deactivated and reactivated it. I cannot see a difference. How do I access the blog users page? Drupal 4.6rc thanks for the help. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 24, 2005 - 20:53 : Bèr Kessels look in the menu admin. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 18, 2005 - 13:38 : Bèr Kessels Nearly two months since the patch. If there is no need for this I will mark it won't fix. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 18, 2005 - 13:52 : tostinni I made a custom block for this, but it still need a little improvment (add "read more" for example). So I don't know if it's usefull but if anyone care : <?php $result = db_query("SELECT u.uid, u.name, COUNT(0) AS num FROM {node} n LEFT JOIN {users} u ON u.uid = n.uid WHERE n.type = 'blog' GROUP BY u.uid, u.name ORDER BY u.name ASC"); while ($blog = db_fetch_object($result)) { $output .= '<li />'.l($blog->name. ' ('.$blog->num.')', 'blog/'.$blog->uid); } return '<ul>'.$output.'</ul>'; ?> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 18, 2005 - 16:06 : Chris Johnson I think this is a useful feature. I've coded custom blocks in the past to provide it on my sites. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 21, 2005 - 05:23 : Andrzej7 I was a little afraid (poor PHP) to install the patch (March...), but I have made a block. And it's very nice. One question only. All the bloggers are shown, but the Admin (user No 1) is on the list and he has no blogs. What's that? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 22, 2005 - 16:24 : Bèr Kessels To avoid confusion: this patch ads no blocks, but shows the list inline: as content! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ June 18, 2005 - 22:07 : igrcic aaargh.....there is a problem when using PostgreSQL db. After I successfully patch blog.module and enable it in menu, click on it and following sql errors pop up: warning: pg_query(): Query failed: ERROR: function count(integer, character varying) does not exist HINT: No function matches the given name and argument types. You may need to add explicit type casts. in /web/www/htdocs/iaeste3/includes/database.pgsql.inc on line 45. user error: query: SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT u.uid, u.name) FROM users u LEFT JOIN node n ON n.uid = u.uid WHERE n.type = 'blog' AND n.status =1 ORDER BY n.created DESC in /web/www/htdocs/iaeste3/includes/database.pgsql.inc on line 62. warning: pg_query(): Query failed: ERROR: for SELECT DISTINCT, ORDER BY expressions must appear in select list in /web/www/htdocs/iaeste3/includes/database.pgsql.inc on line 45. user error: query: SELECT DISTINCT u.uid, u.name FROM users u LEFT JOIN node n ON n.uid = u.uid WHERE n.type = 'blog' AND n.status = 1 ORDER BY n.created DESC LIMIT 10 OFFSET 0 in /web/www/htdocs/iaeste3/includes/database.pgsql.inc on line 62 For first one its clear, there is no such fucntion in Postgresql, and second one is typical Postgresql/Mysql error, n.created isn't in select syntax. But if we put it in a select distinct syntax , it isn't DISTINCT anymore, so I get lots of lines with user and all of his blogs, with different time of course. So we must modify query a bit: SELECT DISTINCT u.name, u.uid, MAX(n.created) as time FROM users u LEFT JOIN node n ON n.uid = u.uid WHERE n.type = 'blog' AND n.status = 1 GROUP BY u.name,u.uid ORDER BY time DESC It works fine like this :) Didn't look for first one yet... will when I catch some time. Cheers!

1 0

[drupal-devel] [feature] List of bloggers
by igrcic 19 Jun '05

19 Jun '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/17030 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: blog.module Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: Bèr Kessels Updated by: igrcic Status: patch aaargh.....there is a problem when using PostgreSQL db. After I successfully patch blog.module and enable it in menu, click on it and following sql errors pop up: warning: pg_query(): Query failed: ERROR: function count(integer, character varying) does not exist HINT: No function matches the given name and argument types. You may need to add explicit type casts. in /web/www/htdocs/iaeste3/includes/database.pgsql.inc on line 45. user error: query: SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT u.uid, u.name) FROM users u LEFT JOIN node n ON n.uid = u.uid WHERE n.type = 'blog' AND n.status =1 ORDER BY n.created DESC in /web/www/htdocs/iaeste3/includes/database.pgsql.inc on line 62. warning: pg_query(): Query failed: ERROR: for SELECT DISTINCT, ORDER BY expressions must appear in select list in /web/www/htdocs/iaeste3/includes/database.pgsql.inc on line 45. user error: query: SELECT DISTINCT u.uid, u.name FROM users u LEFT JOIN node n ON n.uid = u.uid WHERE n.type = 'blog' AND n.status = 1 ORDER BY n.created DESC LIMIT 10 OFFSET 0 in /web/www/htdocs/iaeste3/includes/database.pgsql.inc on line 62 For first one its clear, there is no such fucntion in Postgresql, and second one is typical Postgresql/Mysql error, n.created isn't in select syntax. But if we put it in a select distinct syntax , it isn't DISTINCT anymore, so I get lots of lines with user and all of his blogs, with different time of course. So we must modify query a bit: SELECT DISTINCT u.name, u.uid, MAX(n.created) as time FROM users u LEFT JOIN node n ON n.uid = u.uid WHERE n.type = 'blog' AND n.status = 1 GROUP BY u.name,u.uid ORDER BY time DESC It works fine like this :) Didn't look for first one yet... will when I catch some time. Cheers! igrcic Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 8, 2005 - 23:27 : Bèr Kessels Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/blog_bloggers_list.patch (1.66 KB) Small patch to show a list of bloggers. We all should know that blog.module is not meant for personal blogging, but that set aside, we do not have a way to show all bloggers, on a site as a list. This patch ads a few lines that will allow you to show that overview of blogging users. It ads a menu item, disabled by default that shows such a list. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 8, 2005 - 23:31 : Bèr Kessels Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/blog_bloggers_list.png (4.02 KB) Here is a small screeny that shows what this is about. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 8, 2005 - 23:34 : Bèr Kessels Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/list_bloggers_2.png (2.25 KB) hmm. error in my png file. Here is a correct one. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 19, 2005 - 20:13 : Emiliano Hi Bèr Kessels! Thanks for the patch! It's really useful! :-) I just noticed what I think is a little mistake in this line: $items[] = l($row->name, 'blog/'.$row->uid)." ".theme('xml_icon', url('blog/'.$row->uid.'/feed'), TRUE); Which I believe should end like: $items[] = l($row->name, 'blog/'.$row->uid)." ".theme('xml_icon', url*('blog/feed/'.$row->uid)*, TRUE); Ah, and BTW, "db_rewrite_sql" didn't work for me... I just cut it off... ;-) Cheers, Emiliano. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 17, 2005 - 22:17 : Bèr Kessels Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/blog_bloggers_list_2.patch (1.81 KB) and here is the actual patch. (i think i really need some script that tells me i did not attach a patch ;) ) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 17, 2005 - 22:19 : Bèr Kessels Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/blog_bloggers_list_2_0.patch (1.71 KB) sigh. something tells me i should stop working.... a silly "F" sneaked into the previous patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 24, 2005 - 20:25 : Anonymous I applied the patch, reuploaded the blog.module and then deactivated and reactivated it. I cannot see a difference. How do I access the blog users page? Drupal 4.6rc thanks for the help. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 24, 2005 - 20:53 : Bèr Kessels look in the menu admin. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 18, 2005 - 13:38 : Bèr Kessels Nearly two months since the patch. If there is no need for this I will mark it won't fix. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 18, 2005 - 13:52 : tostinni I made a custom block for this, but it still need a little improvment (add "read more" for example). So I don't know if it's usefull but if anyone care : <?php $result = db_query("SELECT u.uid, u.name, COUNT(0) AS num FROM {node} n LEFT JOIN {users} u ON u.uid = n.uid WHERE n.type = 'blog' GROUP BY u.uid, u.name ORDER BY u.name ASC"); while ($blog = db_fetch_object($result)) { $output .= '<li />'.l($blog->name. ' ('.$blog->num.')', 'blog/'.$blog->uid); } return '<ul>'.$output.'</ul>'; ?> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 18, 2005 - 16:06 : Chris Johnson I think this is a useful feature. I've coded custom blocks in the past to provide it on my sites. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 21, 2005 - 05:23 : Andrzej7 I was a little afraid (poor PHP) to install the patch (March...), but I have made a block. And it's very nice. One question only. All the bloggers are shown, but the Admin (user No 1) is on the list and he has no blogs. What's that? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 22, 2005 - 16:24 : Bèr Kessels To avoid confusion: this patch ads no blocks, but shows the list inline: as content!

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