I'm not sure I really understand the above, but I have used the node profile module to designate content-types as "profile" nodes. Teamed with CCK, you can add as many fields as desired and can group them in fieldsets, or so I reckon (I haven't really tried fieldsets in CCK). If this is not relevant to this discussion, just ignore it :-P On 5/28/07, Mark Leicester <mark.leicester@efurbishment.com> wrote:
Hi Mike,
Yes, I've also found the need for the sort of thing you describe. I have a working implementation that allows the arbitrary grouping of fields into fieldsets, where those fieldsets may be assigned and weighted within any category including the account page itself. Like you I only allow a single level of fieldset. I use an extra table to group fields by a fieldset name in the same way that the current implementation groups by category names. My admin interface is incomplete as yet (clients were happy to have it configured manually and then left alone).
I've also added radio buttons to the available profile field types.
It sounds like we're more or less at the same place. Shall we compare notes?
Cheers, Mark
On 27 May 2007, at 19:42, Mike Anon wrote:
This was posted in the forums under Module Development at: http://drupal.org/node/146972 It has received no responses (so far). If it receives no responses here, as well, then I have the answers to my questions.
I wanted to attach a fairly large number of variables (fields) to each user's profile, and the UI for displaying and updating (editing) "that many" variables was not to my liking.
At the moment (in 4.7, anyway), profile variables can be put into "categories" (apologies to jaza and bdragon, but that is the "official" description of the way that profile fields are divided into separate and distinct groups). When a user profile is edited, the various categories are displayed as links near the top of the first edit screen, with the first edit screen focused on the "account settings" category. Those with user administrative privs can add additional profile fields and each field can (actually, must) be placed within a category. I believe that there are no restrictions on the number of profile fields or the number of profile field categories, although I certainly haven't stress tested it.
The "edit user profile" UI currently loads a separate page for each category. That separate page lists all of the profile fields associated with that category, in the order specified by the normal Drupal weight/alphabetization mechanism. There is no ability to group the fields in a fieldset.
I have a simple module that allows those with user adminsitrative privs the ability to assign each profile field to not only a category, but to a fieldset, as well.
Would this capability interest anybody else? By that I mean is it worth my time to spiff up the existing module I have so that it becomes a contrib module? Like many, I don't want to go through the effort if there is either no interest or, in the extreme, negative interest.
At the moment, the code can only handle a fieldset depth of one. That is, only one level of fieldsets for each category. Of course, each category can have unlimited fieldsets, but they remain at the same level - one beneath the category. The design of the database modification, however, leaves the door open for unlimited fieldset depth (not that anybody would ever use more than 2 or 3 levels).
In addition to someday allowing for unlimited fieldset depth, at some point I can see adding a "report" node allowing for a screen report to be generated with the contents of a given category/fieldset combination. Since users aren't nodes in 4.7, views can't be used to generate a report of this nature.
My discussion on #drupal and #drupal-support lead me to believe that there is not much involved here which will be different for 5.x, although I haven't looked into that myself, yet.
So, the question is, does it make sense for me to put "yet another profile extension module" in play? Translation: would you find this capability to be useful?
I believe that I have checked the existing profile modules and none of them implement this functionality.
Assuming this to be a useful thing for some people, would it make more sense to fold this capbilitity into an existing profile contrib module rather than create a separate contrib module?