CMS & E-Commerce | 0 articles | Tech News, Tutorials & Expert Insights

article-image-customizing-document-joomla-15-part-1

18 Nov 2009

3 min read

Customizing the Document with Joomla! 1.5: Part 1

18 Nov 2009

Introduction The classes that extend JDocument are intended for different response formats. The following table describes the classes and their purposes: Class Format Default MIME type Purpose JDocumentError error text/html Display a fatal error JDocumentFeed feed application/rss+xml or application/atom+xml Syndication feed, RSS, or Atom JDocumentHTML html text/html Default document used for all typical Joomla! responses JDocumentPDF pdf application/pdf Adobe PDF representation JDocumentRAW raw* text/html All other circumstances So what exactly does the format column represent? When a request is made, Joomla! uses the value of the request variable format to determine which document type to use. We really see this only when we retrieve something other than an HTML document, because this always defaults to html. For example, when we request an article as a PDF, we use a URI similar to this: http://example.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5&format=pdf The JDocumentError class is slightly different from the others. We should never really need to interact directly with this. We can, of course, invoke this document indirectly by raising a fatal error. For more information, refer to Error handling and reporting. The Joomla! document object and views in Joomla! MVC components are closely related. For each format that we provide a view, we create a new JView subclass. For example, when we examine the content component, we can see that the article view supports HTML and PDF simply by the presence of the view.html.php and view.pdf.php files. This article also deals with the static JResponse class. This class is used to define the HTTP response, including the HTTP headers. The separation between JResponse and the JDocument object is not always as clear as one would hope. However, this is somewhat inevitable because the two are inextricably linked—the response describes and includes the document output. For example, outputting an HTML response will require the response Content-Type header field to be set accordingly, that is, as text/html. Setting the document title This recipe explains how to set the title of the current document. The exact meaning of title will depend on the type of document. For example, in an HTML document, this is the value encapsulated in the <head> tag. Getting ready Before we do anything, we need the global document object. $document =& JFactory::getDocument(); How to do it... To set the title of the document, we use the JDocument::setTitle() method $document->setTitle('My Unique Title'); If we are outputting an HTML document, this should generate something like this: <title>My Unique Title</title> There's more... Menu items can also define page titles. Thus, the actual title we use should not necessarily be the title of whatever we are viewing. To deal with this, we should use something along these lines: // get the component and page parameters$application =& JFactory::getApplication();$params =& $application->getParams();// get the page title$pageTitle = $params->get('page_title', $defaultTitle);// set the document title$document->setTitle($pageTitle); Setting the document generator This recipe explains how to set the name of the piece of software that generated the page. The exact meaning of generator will depend on the type of document. For example, in an HTML document, this value is used in a tag. Getting ready Before we do anything, we need the global document object. $document =& JFactory::getDocument();

0
0
1714

article-image-event-delivery-network-oracle-soa-suite-11g-r1

Packt

18 Nov 2009

2 min read

Event Delivery Network with Oracle SOA Suite 11g R1

Packt

18 Nov 2009

2 min read

Creating truly decoupled composite SOA applications requires a complete separation of the service consumer and the service provider.This is typically achieved through the use of asynchronous messaging.In an asynchronous messaging pattern, applications can perform in a"fire and forget" mode. This removes the need of an application to know details of the application on the other side. Additionally, it also improves resource utilization as applications are not holding onto resources until the interaction is complete. On the other hand, this introduces complexities of creating and managing message queues and topics. It requires that both the publisher of the message and the consumer use the same messaging technology. Each messaging system also has its own constraints on the types of programming languages and environments that can use the service. In a service-oriented world, this tight coupling to the implementation of the underlying messaging system is at odds with the fundamental requirement of implementation independence. What's needed is a level of abstraction that allows applications to generate an event using business terms and associate a business object in an implementation‑independent form. Oracle SOA Suite 11g addresses this with the introduction of anew feature in the form of the Event Delivery Network. Introducing events The Event Delivery Network (EDN) in Oracle SOA Suite 11g provides a declarative way to use a publish/subscribe model to generate and consume business events without worrying about the underlying message infrastructure. Developers only need to produce or consume events without having to deal with any particular messaging API like JMS, AQ, and MQ, and so on. Consuming an event means expressing an interest in the occurrence of a specific situation,while producing an event means advertising this occurrence. Using the same concepts that are used in Web Service Definition Language (WSDL), EDN uses an XML-based Event Definition Language, which allows you to define the event and its associated,strongly typed data. This definition is then registered with the SOA Infrastructure and is available to all composites to publish or subscribe. SERVICES MESSAGING EDN WSDL:Standard service interface model JMS API:Application Programming Interface EDL:Event Definition Language XSD:Strong typing Handful of raw types XSD Business-oriented Developer-oriented Business-oriented Wealth of tools Mostly coding tools Fully declarative

0
0
1630

article-image-providing-context-using-custom-text-upk-35

Packt

17 Nov 2009

10 min read

Providing context using Custom Text in UPK 3.5

Packt

17 Nov 2009

10 min read

The Start Frame You may recall that the very first Frame in a Topic is the Start Frame. This is sometimes referred to as the Introduction frame, which is largely a throwback to OnDemand, as we shall see shortly. As this Frame is the first thing that a trainee will see when they carry out a Topic, coupled with the fact that this Frame is a "non-action" Frame, in that the user does not need to actively do anything (other than pressing Enter to continue), it is a good place to provide some additional information to the trainee. The first thing that you should explain in the Introduction frame is exactly what the trainee will be learning in the exercise. Certainly the title of the Topic should give them a clue, but this is not really detailed enough. A good source of information for this is the learning objectives of the course for which this exercise has been built, or the competencies, depending on your curriculum development process. For our sample exercise, we could use the bubble shown in the following screenshot: This is a good start, but we can do more. It is always useful, with training exercises, to use realistic business scenarios to explain what the trainee is doing, to put the keystrokes and mouse-clicks into a business context. Trainees are much more likely to remember information to which they can relate. Consider telling a story and walking the trainees through that story as they carry out the exercise. Although it is a fairly spurious example, we will continue with our sample exercise. Here, we could use the bubble shown in the following screenshot: So now the trainee has a good idea of what they will learn, and they have an example that they can relate to. The text is also directed at the trainee, so the trainee will feel actively involved. There is another strong argument for including a scenario in the form shown above. Consider the case where you are providing training for users in multiple locations (possibly countries) or departments, each of which has its own set of customers, products, and vendors. Users will always want to see exercises using their data: orders for their products, placed at their location, and so on. To keep everyone happy, you would need to develop a separate, customized Topic for each location or user group. If the basic process (and, most importantly for us, the Actions in the recording) is the same in each case, this is clearly inefficient. However, if you create a scenario, and say something like "You are a Customer Service Representative in the Tampa Service Center. Customer SunCo has phoned through an order for 1,000 gallons of regular gasoline. You need to record this order in the system so that it can be fulfilled by Fuel Services." then trainees who are not at the Tampa Service Center will at least understand that this is role play. It is make believe, and they shouldn't be concerned that they don't see products that they don't supply at their own location. So set the scene with a scenario in the Introduction pane, and then build on this throughout the exercise. Introduction Text: Version differences At this point, it is worth highlighting some key differences between the way the Introduction pane was handled prior to UPK 3.5, and the way that the Introduction pane is used in UPK 3.5. If you open an Outline Element in the Outline Editor, and select a Topic in the navigation tree, you will see that the lower-right portion of the screen is labeled Introduction, as shown in the following screenshot: The Outline Editor is used to organize content objects into the structure that the trainee will see. However, if we look at the published version of the Outline above, we will see the following: Where has the Introduction Frame gone? Put simply. UPK 3.5 does not display the Introduction Frame in the Player any more. Users of UPK 2.x or OnDemand 9.x will recall that the Introduction Frame certainly used to be displayed, as shown in the following screenshot, which is taken from OnDemand 9.1.5: Quite why Oracle decided to change the way the Introduction pane is displayed (or not) in version 3.5 is a mystery (maybe they felt that with all that screen space required for the new Oracle branding, there just wasn't the space left to include the Introduction any more). However, it does have some important implications on the way that we are planning on using it. This is because the effect of a publishing option associated with the Introduction pane has changed significantly. In the Publishing Wizard, the options for the Player package include an option to Show introduction text. In OnDemand version 9.1, this option determined whether the Introduction text appeared in the Outline as well as on the first Frame of the Player. However, in UPK 3.5, the Introduction text is never displayed in the Outline and the Show introduction text determines whether the Introduction text appears in the Player at all (effectively, it controls whether the Start Frame is included in the Player or not. Version Difference The Content Development manual for OnDemand 9.1.5 describes the Show introduction text option as working the way described for UPK 3.5. It doesn't work that way; it works the way described for OnDemand 9.1, above. This is clearly a rare case of the documentation being updated before the software. For our purposes, therefore, we need to make sure that the Show introduction text option is always selected when we publish. This option can be found in the Player category of your Options, as shown in the next screenshot: Action Frames It is possible to add Custom Text to the Topic's Bubbles, either in addition to, or instead of, the Template Text. Using the Template Text has several significant advantages, especially when localizing your content or providing sound. However, the Template Text will only ever be able to describe the mechanics of what the user is doing, it cannot provide business context. You should always try to teach more than just key-strokes and mouse-clicks. Specifically, you should always take the opportunity to add business context yourself, through the liberal use of Custom Text in Action Frames. Consider the following example that uses solely the default template texts: Certainly the trainee can carry out the required action and work their way through the exercise, but are they really learning anything? What is the Ext.Ref field, and what is the significance of the value ZBW002342? Should they always enter this value, or are other values possible? Here, we should help the trainee out and teach them something by providing some more information through the use of Custom Text. A better version is shown in the following screenshot: Now the trainee knows exactly what they are entering in the exercise, and understands the business context so they can perform the action correctly when they are doing their actual job. Note that here, we have retained the Template Text (we did not insert the Template Text as Custom Text) which will aid in the translation (although the custom text will still need to be manually translated). We simply added the first paragraph that you see in the Bubble above as Custom Text, and positioned it before the Template Text (the Show custom text first button () is selected by default; you can deselect this if required, to have the Template Text displayed first, but for our purposes we want the Custom Text first). UPK will run the Template Text in the next line immediately after the Custom Text, so you need to insert an extra line break at the end of the Custom Text if you want the two texts to appear as separate paragraphs. In this example, note that we have continued the scenario that we described in the Introduction pane through into this exercise, by mentioning the customer's name. Again, it is always useful to use a scenario so that the trainee can better relate the exercise to their actual jobs. Note that the text For this exercise...is ZBW002342 will need to be tagged to appear only in See It! and Try It! modes. UPK will run the Template Text in the next line immediately after the Custom Text, so you need to insert an extra line break at the end of the Custom Text if you want the two texts to appear as separate paragraphs. In this example, note that we have continued the scenario that we described in the Introduction pane through into this exercise, by mentioning the customer's name. Again, it is always useful to use a scenario so that the trainee can better relate the exercise to their actual jobs. Note that the text For this exercise...is ZBW002342 will need to be tagged to appear only in See It! and Try It! modes. Whenever practical, you should try to provide some more information, whether this is business context, or a continuation of the scenario you are using, even if this is on every Frame. If you intend for your simulations being used outside of a classroom environment, then you should consider providing exactly the same level of information as the instructor would provide in a classroom. Think about what you would say to the trainee, what additional information or guidance you would give them if you sat next to them, talking them through the simulation, and then add that information into the Bubbles as Custom Text. Remember: training is the effective transfer of knowledge, and if that knowledge is incomplete, then the trainees have not been adequately trained. The End Frame The End Frame is always displayed as the final Frame in the simulation. There is no End Frame equivalent of the Show introduction text option to avoid having this Frame displayed. This is a good thing, as it means that we can use this Frame to provide some final information to the user. This should be seen as a companion to the Start Frame, and should confirm the information presented in the Start Frame. In the Start Frame above, we told the trainee what they would learn. In the End Frame, we should confirm that they have learned this. (This much is standard training theory.) If you have described a scenario in the Start Frame, and followed this through the Action Frames, then you should make reference to this, as well. Suitable End Frame text for our ongoing exercise on SAP user options could be: Although the scenario information is again fairly spurious in this example, it does at least give you an idea of the kind of information that can usefully be included in the End Frame. Again, this information should be tagged for See It! and Try It! modes only. Note that in this example we have also included a message of You have now completed this exercise. This is a nice courtesy, and confirms to the trainee that they have reached the end of the simulation.

0
0
3413

article-image-session-and-user-joomla-15-part-2

Packt

16 Nov 2009

8 min read

The Session and the User with Joomla! 1.5: Part 2

Packt

16 Nov 2009

8 min read

Getting the user's group ID and type The following organized list describes the user groups in Joomla! 1.5 in a way in which we are all probably familiar. Each of these groups has an ID and a name; these are the group's ID and type respectively. This recipe explains how to find the group ID and group type of the current user. Note that the hard coded group IDs should not generally be used for access control; for this it is best to take advantage of the JAuthorization class. For more information, refer to the Joomla! API site: http://api.joomla.org/. Dynamic permissions There is no administrative functionality that allows the modification of groups. It is, however, possible to programmatically modify groups and group permissions. Most of the time a Joomla! 1.5 extension will opt to implement its own permission management rather than use the incomplete Joomla! solution. Joomla! 1.6, in development at the time of writing, promises a complete GACL (Group Access Control List) implementation. Getting ready To complete this recipe, we need the JUser object that represents the current user. For more information, refer to the Getting the user recipe covered earlier in this article. $user =& JFactory::getUser(); How to do it... The group ID is held in the gid field in the #__users table. We use the JUser::get() method to extract the user's group ID. // determine group ID$groupID = $user->get('gid'); The group type is held in the usertype field in the #__users table. Again, we use the JUser::get() method to extract the user's group ID. $usertype = $user->get('usertype'); How it works... Apart from the obvious format of the data, there is a subtle difference between the gid and usertype fields. The gid field is always populated, where as the usertype field is populated only if the user is not blocked. When dealing with the current user, the user will never be blocked, but when dealing with other users there is a possibility that the usertype field will not be populated. Therefore, we need to be careful that we select the most appropriate field, depending on the context of what we are doing. The user groups that we have mentioned are maintained in the #__core_acl_aro_groups table, or as it can also be called, the Access Control List Access Request Object Groups table. This table holds a tree structure, as indicated in the introduction of the recipe. What is noticeable is that Public Frontend and Public Backend are both technically user groups. As this is a tree structure, we can use the left and right values to perform all sorts of neat tricks. The #__core_acl_aro_groups table employs the nested set model: http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/hierarchical-data.html. See also The next recipe explains how to use the Public, Registered, and Special access levels. Restricting a user's access using Public, Registered, and Special In Joomla! we often define access based on three simple access levels. These levels relate to the user groups described in the previous recipe, Getting the user's group ID and type. This recipe explains how to use these access levels to restrict access to resources. Public (0) Registered (1) Special (2) Getting ready To complete this recipe, we need the JUser object that represents the current user. For more information, refer to the Getting the user recipe covered earlier in this article. $user =& JFactory::getUser(); How to do it... The JUser::get() method can be used to retrieve the user's aid. This is the access level number, as shown in braces in the recipe introduction. // get access level$aid = $user->get('aid'); For each resource we want to restrict access to, we must define the required access level. This is normally done in a database TINYINT(3) field named access. This can then be used to restrict the access using a database query (used when listing)... // get the DBO$db =& JFactory::getDBO();// prepare access field name$access = $db->nameQuote('access');// restrict query by access level$where = "WHERE $access <= " . intval($aid); ...or when viewing a single record. Note that ALERTNOTAUTH is a core translation string, which in en-GB is equivalent to You are not authorised to view this resource. // make sure the user has the necessary access rightsif ($table->get('access') > $aid) { JError::raiseError(403, JText::_('ALERTNOTAUTH')); jexit();} How it works... A good example of this in action is the content component. If we take a look at the article manager, we can see that there is an Access Level associated with each article that determines which users can access the article. These access levels are relatively primitive and we don't have any bona fide control over them. So how do they translate into concrete user groups? The following table describes the seven user groups and the guest group, and shows how these relate to the access levels: User Group User Group ID Access Level Access Level ID None (Guest) 0 Public 0 Registered 18 Registered 1 Author 19 Special 2 Editor 20 Special 2 Publisher 21 Special 2 Manager 23 Special 2 Administrator 24 Special 2 Super Administrator 25 Special 2 See also The previous recipe explains how to work with the user group ID and group type. This can also be useful for dealing with access control. Getting the user's parameters User parameters provide a mechanism for including additional user data without the need to modify the database. The core user parameters are defined in the XML files located in the administratorcomponentscom_usersmodels folder. Getting ready To complete this recipe, we need the JUser object that represents the current user. For more information, refer to the Getting the user recipe. $user =& JFactory::getUser(); How to do it... To retrieve a parameter we must first know the name of the parameter we want to retrieve. One example of a common parameter is timezone. This is an integer that defines the hours offset from UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), also known as GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) and Z (Zulu). To retrieve a parameter, we can use the JUser::getParam() method. $timezone = $user->getParam('timezone'); It is also possible to provide a default value. This is useful especially if the user we are dealing with is a guest because guest users do not have any parameters defined by default. $timezone = $user->getParam('timezone', '0'); How it works... A user's parameters are represented as a JParameter object. We do not have to interact directly with this object because JUser will do this for us. A minor problem with this method is the default value. Technically the XML files define the default values, but by default these XML files are not loaded by the JUser class. Therefore, the XML defined default values are not employed. One way to overcome this is to interact directly with the JParameter object. The next section explains how to do this. There's more... The JUser::getParamters() method allows us to directly access the user's JParameter object. Note that we must use =& when assigning the return value to a variable. If we do not and we are using a PHP version prior to PHP 5, we will inadvertently create a copy of the returned JParameter object. // get parameters with XML definition file loaded$params =& $user->getParameters(true); When we retrieve the JParameter object there are two optional parameters. The first parameter $loadsetupfile determines whether or not the XML file that defines the user's parameters should be loaded. Loading this file gives meaning to the data and also provides default values for defined data. For information about the second optional parameter, refer to the recipe, Extending and editing user parameters. To retrieve a value, we use the JParameter::get() method. We pass two parameters to this method—the name of the parameter we want the value of, and the default value to return if the parameter does not exist. // get timezone (hours UTC offset)$timezone = $params->get('timezone', '0'); See also The next recipe, Setting the user's parameters, explains how to set a value in the user's parameters. Setting the user's parameters User parameters provide a mechanism for including additional user data without the need to modify the database. The parameters are defined in the XML files located in the administratorcomponentscom_usersmodels folder. User parameters are not restricted to the parameters defined in the XML files. It is perfectly acceptable to add additional parameters. Getting ready To complete this recipe, we need the JUser object that represents the current user. For more information, refer to the Getting the user recipe. $user =& JFactory::getUser(); How to do it... To set the value of a parameter, we use the JUser::setParam() method. This method requires two parameters—the name of the parameter we want to set and the value to which we want to set the parameter. For example, we could change the user's editor preference to use no editor. // set value of someparameter to some value$user->setParam('editor', 'none'); There's more... If we have retrieved the JParamter object directly from the user, we can alternatively use that object to set the user's parameters. For information about retrieving the user's parameters, refer to the previous recipe, Getting the user's parameters. To set data in the JParameter object, we use the JParameter::set() method. // set value of someparameter to some value$params->set('editor', 'none'); See also The previous recipe explains how to get a value from the user's parameters.

0
0
1203

Packt

16 Nov 2009

12 min read

Using Web Pages in UPK 3.5

Packt

16 Nov 2009

12 min read

Using Web Pages in the Concept pane The most common use of Web Pages is to provide context information for Topics. Look at the following image of the Outline for our example course: You will see that the upper-right section of the Outline window contains a pane labeled Concept. If you want any information to be displayed in this pane, then you need to create a Web Page and attach it to the content object in the Outline. Version Difference Although the Concept pane always appears in the Outline view, if it is empty, then it does not appear in the Player. This is, thankfully, a new feature in UPK 3.5. In previous versions, the Concept pane always appeared in the Player, often appearing as a blank frame, where developers couldn't be bothered to provide any concepts. To create a new Web Page and attach it to a content object, carry out the following steps: Open the Outline containing the content object to which you want to attach the Web Page, in the Outline Editor. Click on the content object to select it. Although in this example we are attaching a Web Page to the concept pane for a Topic, Modules, and Sections also have concept panes, so you can also attach Web Pages to these as well. Click on the Create new web page button () in the Concept pane. The Save As dialog box is displayed. Navigate to the folder in which you want to save the Web Page (we will use an Assets sub-folder for all of our Web Pages), enter a name for the Web Page (it makes sense to use a reference to the content object to which the Web Page relates), and then click on the Save button. The Web Page Editor is opened on the Developer screen, as shown in the next screenshot: Enter the information that you want to appear in the Concept pane in the editor (as has already been done in the previous example). You can set the font face and size; set text to bold, italics, and underlined; change the text color, and change change the background color (again, as has been done in the earlier example). You can also change the paragraph alignment, and format numbered and bulleted lists. Once you have entered the required text, click on the Save button () to save your changes, and then close the Web Page Editor tabbed page. You are returned to the Outline Editor. Now, the Concept pane shows the contents of the Web Page, as shown in the next screenshot: Version Difference In UPK 3.5 (and OnDemand 9.1) you can only attach a single Web Page to the Concept pane. This is a change from OnDemand 8.7, where you could attach multiple Infoblocks and they would be displayed sequentially. (But note that if you convert content from OnDemand 8.7 where there are multiple Infoblocks in a single Concept pane, then all of the attached Infoblocks will be converted to a single Web Page in UPK 3.5.) The above steps explain how to attach a Web Page to the Concept pane for an exercise from the Outline. Although this is done from the Outline, the Web Page is attached to the Topic content object and not to the outline element. If you subsequently insert the same Topic in another Outline, the same Web Page will be used in the Concept pane of the new Outline. You can also attach a Web Page to the Concept pane for an exercise from within the Topic Editor. This is a useful option if you want to create concept Web Page but have not yet built an Outline to house the Topic. To do this, follow these steps: Open the Topic in the Topic Editor. Select menu option View|Concept Properties. The Concept Properties dialog box is displayed. This is very similar to the Concept pane seen in the Overview. It contains the same buttons. Create and save the Web Page as described above. When you have finished, and the Web Page is displayed in the Concept Properties dialog box, click on the OK button. Using images in Web Pages As stated above, a Web Page can contain an image. This can be instead of, or in addition to, any text (although if you only wanted to include a single image in the Web Page you could always use a Package, as explained later in this article). Images are a nice way of adding interest to a Web Page (and therefore to your training), or of providing additional information that is better explained graphically (after all, a picture is worth a thousand words). However, if you are using images in the Concept pane, then you should consider the overall size of the image and the likely width of the Concept pane, bearing in mind that the trainee may run the Player in a smaller window than the one you design. For our sample exercise, given that we are providing simulations for the SAP system, we will include a small SAP logo in the Web Page that appears in the Concept pane for our course Module. For the sake of variety, we will do this from the Library, and not from the Outline Editor. To add an image to a Web Page, carry out the steps described below. In the Library, locate the folder containing the Web Page to which you want to add the image. Double-click on the Web Page, to open it in the Web Page Editor. As before, this is opened in a separate tab in the main UPK Developer window, as can be seen in the next screenshot: Within the Web Page, position the cursor at the place in the text where you want the image to appear. Select menu option Insert|Image. The Insert Image dialog box is displayed, as shown in the next screenshot: In the Link to bar on the leftmost side of the dialog box, select the location of the image file that you want to insert into the Web Page. You can insert an image that you have already imported into your Library (for example, in a Package), an image that is located on your computer (or any attached drive) (option Image on My Computer), or an image from the Internet (option URL). For our sample exercise, we will insert an image from our computer. In the rightmost side of the dialog box, navigate to and select the image file that you want to insert into the Web Page. Click on OK. The image is inserted, as shown in the following screenshot: Save the Web Page, and close the Web Page Editor, if you have finished editing this Web Page. (We have not; we want to adjust the image, as explained below). Of course, this doesn't look too pretty. Thankfully, we can do something about this, because UPK provides some rudimentary features for adjusting images in Web Pages. To adjust the size or position of an image in a Web Page, carry out the following steps: With the Web Page open in the Web Page Editor, right-click on the image that you want to adjust, and then select Image Properties from the context menu. The Image Properties dialog box is displayed, as shown in the next screenshot: In the Alternative Text field, enter a short text description of the image. This will be used as the ToolTip in some web browsers. Under Size, select whether you want to use the original image size or not, and specify a new height and width if you choose not. Under Appearance, select a border width and indicate where the image should be aligned on the Web Page. Your choices are: Top, Middle, Bottom, Left, and Right. The first three of these (the vertical options) control the position of the image relative to the line of text in which it is located. The last two (the horizontal options) determine whether the image is left-aligned or right-aligned within the overall Web Page. Although these are two independent things (vertical and horizontal), you can only select one, so if you want the image to be right-aligned and halfway down the page, you can't do it. Click on OK to confirm your changes. Save and close the Web Page. For our sample exercise, we resized the image, set it to be right-aligned, and added a 1pt border around it (because it looked odd with a white background against the blue of the Web Page, without a border). A better option would be to use an image with a transparent background. In this example we have used an image with a solid background just for the purposes of illustration. These settings are as shown in the previous screenshot. This gives us a final Web Page as shown in the next screenshot. Note that this screenshot is taken from the Player, so that you can see how images are handled in the Player. Note that the text flows around the image. You will see that there is a little more space to the right of the image than there is above it. This is to leave room for a scrollbar. Creating independent Web Pages In the previous section, we looked at how to use a Web Page to add information to the Concept pane of a content object. In this section, we will look at how to use Web Pages to provide information in other areas. Observant readers will have noticed that a Web Page is in fact an independent content object itself. When you created a Web Page to attach to a Concept pane, you edited this Web Page in its own tabbed editor and saved it to its own folder (our Assets folder). Hopefully, you also noticed that in addition to the Create new web page button (), the Concept pane also has a Create link button () that can be used to attach an existing Web Page to the Concept pane. It should, therefore, come as no surprise to learn that Web Pages can be created independently of the Concept pane. In fact, the Concept pane is only one of several uses of Web Pages. To create a Web Page that is independent of a Concepts pane (or anything else), carry out these steps. In the Library, navigate to the folder in which you want to store the Web Page. In our example, we are saving all of the Web Pages for a module in a sub-folder called Assets within the course folder. Select menu option File|New|Web Page. A Web Page Editor tabbed page is opened up on the Developer screen. The content and use of this is exactly as described above in the explanation of how to create a Web Page from within an Outline. Enter the required information into the Web Page, and format it as required. We have already covered most of the available options, above. Once you have made your changes, click on the Save button (). You will be prompted to select the destination folder (which will default to the folder selected in Step 1, although you can change this) and a file name. Refer to the description of the Save As dialog box above for additional help if necessary. Close the Web Page Editor. You have now created a new Web Page. Now let's look at how to use it. Using Web Pages in Topics If you recall our long-running exercise on maintaining your SAP user profile, you will remember that we ask the user to enter their last name and their first name. These terms may be confusing in some countries—especially in countries where the "family name" actually comes before the "given name"—so we want to provide some extra explanation of some common name formats in different countries, and how these translate into first name and last name. We'll provide this information in a Web Page, and then link to this Web Page at the relevant place(s) within our Topic. First, we need to create the Web Page. How to do this is explained in the section Creating independent Web Pages, above. For our exercise, our created Web Page is as follows: There are two ways in which you can link to a Web Page from a Topic. These are explained separately, below. Linking via a hyperlink With a hyperlink, the Web Page is linked from a word or phrase within the Bubble Text of a Frame. (Note that it is only possible to do this for Custom Text because you can't select the Template Text to hyperlink from.) To create a hyperlink to a Web Page from within a Frame in a Topic, carry out the steps described below: Open up the Topic in the Topic Editor. Navigate to the Frame from which you want to provide the hyperlink. In our exercise, we will link from the Explanation Frame describing the Last name field (this is Frame 5B). In the Bubble Properties pane, select the text that you want to form the hyperlink (that is, the text that the user will click on to display the Web Page). Click on the Bubble text link button () in the Bubble Properties pane. The Bubble Text Link Properties dialog box is displayed. Click on the Create link button () to create a link to an existing Web Page (you could also click on the Create new web page button () to create a new Web Page if you have not yet created it). The Insert Hyperlink dialog box is displayed, as shown in the next screenshot: Make sure that the Document in Library option is selected in the Link to: bar. In the Look in: field, navigate to the folder containing the Web Page (the Assets folder, in our example). In the file list, click on the Web Page to which you want to create a hyperlink. Click on the Open button. Back in the Bubble Text Link Properties dialog box, click on OK. This hyperlink will now appear as follows, in the Player: Note that there is no ToolTip for this hyperlink. There was no opportunity to enter one in the steps above, so UPK doesn't know what to use. Version Difference In OnDemand 8.7 the Infoblock name was used as the ToolTip, but this is not the case from OnDemand 9.x onwards.

0
0
2947

Packt

16 Nov 2009

9 min read

Glossary in UPK 3.5

Packt

16 Nov 2009

9 min read

A Glossary in UPK effectively associates Web Pages to key terms. UPK will then turn any instance of that key term within a Topic (or other content object) to which that Glossary is assigned into a hyperlink to the associated Web Page. You could do this manually by creating Web Pages (as explained above) and then creating hyperlinks to these manually, but the advantage of using the Glossary functionality is that UPK will 'automatically' find each occurrence of the glossary term and create the hyperlink. I say 'automatically' in quotation marks, as UPK does not do this completely automatically. You have to tell it to go and create the hyperlinks, but once you tell it to do so, it will dutifully go off and find 'every' occurrence of all of the terms in the glossary and create the hyperlinks to the definition. And I say 'every' in quotation marks, because UPK won't necessarily link every instance of the term. UPK allows you to choose (at the Library level) whether it turns literally every occurrence of the term found in a location into a hyperlink, or only the first occurrence. A location here is effectively a single Bubble or Web Page. One could well ask why UPK doesn't provide the option to create a Glossary link only for the first occurrence of the term in a Topic. The simple answer is that it does not necessarily know which occurrence is the first, because the Topic could include Alternative Paths. So UPK takes an over-cautious approach, and considers each block of information separately. This option is specified in the Options panel (menu option Tools|Options), under the Content Defaults|Glossary section, as shown in the following screenshot: Creating a glossary To create a Glossary in UPK, follow these steps: From the main Library screen, click on the folder within which you want to create the Glossary. You can create the Glossary in any folder, but it makes sense to have a single folder that contains the Glossary file itself, and all of the Web Pages used for the terms. Select menu option File|New|Glossary. The Glossary Editor is opened in a new tab within the UPK Developer window, as shown in the following screenshot: To create glossary entries from within the Glossary, follow these steps: Enter the glossary term in the first free Glossary Term field. Click in the Definition Link field on the same line. An ellipsis (...) is displayed on the rightmost side of the field. Click on the ellipsis. The Edit Definition Link dialog box is displayed. Click on the Create New Web Page field. The Save As dialog box is displayed. Navigate to the directory in which you want to save the Glossary definition. Again, it makes sense to save these in the same folder as the Glossary itself. The Name field will default to the glossary term specified in the Glossary Term field. It is recommended that you keep this default, and use the definition term as the Web Page name. You could use any other name, if you wanted to (UPK does not use this name to locate the definition; it uses its own, internal identifier) but using the same name will allow you to easily locate the term Web Page if you need to. Click on the Save button. A new tab is opened for the Web Page. Enter the Glossary description into this page. The Web Page will use the default font and colors. You can override these defaults, if required. Close the Web Page by clicking on the x on the rightmost side of the open tab list. You are passed back to the Glossary Editor. Enter a suitable ToolTip text for the glossary entry in the Tooltip field. This text will be displayed when the user hovers the mouse over the hyperlinked glossary term. If only whole instances of the glossary term should be turned into hyperlinks (for example, if the term is Order then "Orders" and "Ordering" will not be hyperlinked), then select the Match Whole Word option. Otherwise, make sure that this option is not selected. If only text that matches the case of the term should be turned into hyperlinks (for example, if the term is Order then "order" will not be hyperlinked), then select the Match Case field. Otherwise, make sure that this option is not selected. Repeat Steps 1 to 14 for all additional terms that you want to add to the Glossary. To create a glossary entry that uses an existing Web Page for the glossary term, follow these steps: Enter the glossary term in the first free Glossary Term field. Click in the Definition Link field on the same line. An ellipsis (...) is displayed on the rightmost side of the field. Click on the ellipsis. The Edit Definition Link dialog box is displayed. Click on the Create Link button. The Insert Hyperlink dialog box is displayed. Navigate to, and select, the Web Page that contains the glossary description. Click on OK. The Edit Definition Link dialog box is redisplayed. You can edit the Web Page directly from this dialog box, by clicking on the Edit Web Page icon. Click on OK. You are returned to the Glossary tabbed page. Once you have defined all required Glossary entries, save and close the Glossary, by following the steps shown below: Click the Save button to save your changes to the Glossary. The Save As dialog box is displayed. Navigate to the directory in which you want to save the Glossary. Enter a suitable name for the Glossary in the Name field. Close the Glossary Editor by clicking on the x on the rightmost side of the open tab list. An example of a partially-populated Glossary is shown in the next screenshot: You can see from the Definition Link column above that all of the Glossary definition files are stored in the same, single folder, called Glossary. This is the same folder that the Glossary object itself is stored in. Personally, I find it useful to keep all of the content objects for the Glossary in the same single folder. This is not strictly necessary, but it does keep things organized. You will also note that the Tooltip is the same in every case. I tend to always use the tooltip Glossary so that the user knows that the hyperlink links to the Glossary, and not to another form of Web Page. Assigning a Glossary to content objects Creating a Glossary is only half the story. You need to manually assign the Glossary to each object that you want to use that Glossary (that is, for which you want the terms specified in the Glossary to be hyperlinked to the Glossary definitions). Version Difference In OnDemand Version 8.7 and earlier, a single Glossary was created for a Title, and was automatically applied to all content objects within that Title. In UPK 3.5, it is possible to have multiple Glossaries within a single Library, so it is necessary to specify which content objects should use which Glossary. This assignment is done via the content object's Properties, as shown in the screenshot below. The Glossary property is available for Modules, Sections, Topics, and Web Pages. This means that you could potentially assign one Glossary to a Module, another Glossary to a Section within this Module, and a third Glossary to a Topic within that Section. Not that you're very likely to want to do this. But you could. The further implication of the requirement to assign a Glossary to each content object individually is that you can define multiple Glossaries, and assign different Glossaries to different objects. I'd question the wisdom of assigning one glossary to a Module, and then an entirely different Glossary to a Topic within that Module, but I can certainly see the benefit of having multiple Glossaries available in a Library that contained (for example) simulations for multiple applications; you could create application-specific Glossaries (as you no doubt do at the moment) and then assign each Glossary to only the content objects for the relevant application. The downside (for those of us who favor modularization and reuse) is that it is only possible to assign a single Glossary to any given object. So it is not possible to, say, create a company-wide Glossary and separate application-specific Glossaries, and then assign the company-wide Glossary and the relevant application-specific glossary to a single Topic. But more resourceful readers will have already worked out how to get around this limitation. Need a clue? Glossary entries are just Web Pages, and any given Web Page can be reused in multiple places. Need more help? A Web Page can be included in more than one Glossary. So you should first define Web Pages for all of your Glossary terms. You can then create multiple Glossaries (for example, one for each application), and include whichever terms' Web Pages you need to in each of the glossaries. If a term applies to two applications, then simply include the Web Page for that term in the Glossaries for both applications. Simple! Of course there is some slight duplication of effort as you need to create the entry in the actual Glossary content object twice (once in each glossary), but you are reusing the individual definitions, so it could be worse. Unfortunately, unlike Templates, it is not possible to specify a default Glossary in your user defaults. This means that this assignment must be done separately for each content object. However, there are a couple of shortcuts that UPK provides which avoid the need to assign the Glossary to content objects one by one. First, if you select multiple content objects (Modules, Sections, Topics, or Web Pages) and display the Properties pane, then you can assign the Glossary to all of the selected objects in one fell swoop. Second, if you assign a Glossary to a Module, then any new Sections or Titles that you create within that Module – that is, from within the Outline Editor – will inherit this Glossary assignment. However, it is important to note that this will only apply to new content objects. If you assign a Glossary to an outline element and then insert pre-existing content objects into this outline element, then these pre-existing content objects will not inherit the Glossary assignment. Regenerating the Glossary links Glossary links are not created (or updated) automatically. You need to tell UPK to go and search through your content objects and turn any instances of the Glossary terms into links to the Glossary definitions. This is good in that you can at least have control over when it does this, but bad in that it is easy to forget to do so.

0
0
1128

article-image-session-and-user-joomla-15-part-1

Packt

16 Nov 2009

9 min read

The Session and the User with Joomla! 1.5: Part 1

Packt

16 Nov 2009

9 min read

0
0
1927

article-image-using-javascript-effects-joomla

Packt

06 Nov 2009

7 min read

Using JavaScript Effects with Joomla!

Packt

06 Nov 2009

7 min read

Customizing Google Maps Google Maps has a comprehensive API for interacting with maps on your website. MooTools can be used to load the Google Maps engine at the correct time. It can also act as a bridge between the map and other HTML elements on your site. To get started, you will first need to get an API key to use Google Maps on your domain. You can sign up for a free key at http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html. Even if you are working on your local computer, you still need the key. For instance, if the base URL of your Joomla installation is http://localhost/joomla, you will enter localhost as the domain for your API key. Once you have an API key ready, create the file basicmap.js in the /components/com_js folder, and fill it with the following code: window.addEvent('domready', function() { if (GBrowserIsCompatible()) { var map = new GMap2($('map_canvas')); map.setCenter(new GLatLng(38.89, -77.04), 12); window.onunload=function() { GUnload(); }; }}); The entire script is wrapped within a call to the MooTools-specific addEvent() member function of window. Because we want this code to execute once the DOM is ready, the first parameter is the event name 'domready'. The second parameter is an anonymous function containing our code. What does the call to function() do?Using function() in JavaScript is a way of creating an anonymous function. This way, you can create functions that are used in only one place (such as event handlers) without cluttering the namespace with a needless function name. Also, the code within the anonymous function operates within its own scope; this is referred to as a closure. Closures are very frequently used in modern JavaScript frameworks, for event handling and other distinct tasks. Once inside of the function, GBrowserIsCompatible() is used to determine if the browser is capable of running Google Maps. If it is, a new instance of GMap2() is declared and bound to the HTML element that has an id of 'map_canvas' and is stored into map. The call to $('map_canvas') is a MooTools shortcut for document.GetElementById(). Next, the setCenter() member function of map is called to tell Google Maps where to center the map and how far to zoom in. The first parameter is a GLatLng() object, which is used to set the specific latitude and longitude of the map's center. The other parameter determines the zoom level, which is set to 12 in this case. Finally, the window.onunload event is set to a function that calls GUnload(). When the user navigates away from the page, this function removes Google Maps from memory, to prevent memory leaks. With our JavaScript in place, it is now time to add a function to the controller in /components/com_js/js.php that will load it along with some HTML. Add the following basicMap() function to this file: function basicMap(){ $key = 'DoNotUseThisKeyGetOneFromCodeDotGoogleDotCom'; JHTML::_('behavior.mootools'); $document =& JFactory::getDocument(); $document->addScript('http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&v= 2&key=' . $key); $document->addScript( JURI::base() . 'components/com_js/basicmap.js'); ?> <div id="map_canvas" style="width: 500px; height: 300px"></div> <?php} The basicMap() function starts off by setting $key to the API key received from Google. You should replace this value with the one you receive at http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html. Next, JHTML::_('behavior.mootools'); is called to load MooTools into the <head> tag of the HTML document. This is followed by getting a reference to the current document object through the getDocument() member function of JFactory. The addScript() member function is called twice—once to load in the Google Maps API (using our key), then again to load our basicmap.js script. (The Google Maps API calls in all of the functions and class definitions beginning with a capital 'G'.) Finally, a <div> with an id of 'map_canvas' is sent to the browser. Once this function is in place and js.php has been saved, load index.php?option=com_js&task=basicMap in the browser. Your map should look like this: We can make this map slightly more interesting by adding a marker to a specific address. To do so, add the highlighted code below to the basicmap.js file: window.addEvent('domready', function() { if (GBrowserIsCompatible()) { var map = new GMap2($('map_canvas')); map.setCenter(new GLatLng(38.89, -77.04), 12); var whitehouse = new GClientGeocoder(); whitehouse.getLatLng('1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW', function(latlng) { marker = new GMarker( latlng ); marker.bindInfoWindowHtml('<strong>The White House</strong>'); map.addOverlay(marker); }); window.onunload=function(){ GUnload(); }; }}); This code sets whitehouse as an instance of the GClientGeocoder class. Next, the getLatLng() member function of GClientGeocoder is called. The first parameter is the street address to be looked up. The second parameter is an anonymous function where the GLatLng object is passed once the address lookup is complete. Within this function, marker is set as a new GMarker object, which takes the passed-in latlng object as a parameter. The bindInfoWindowHTML() member function of GMarker is called to add an HTML message to appear in a balloon above the marker. Finally, the maker is passed into the addOverlay() member function of GMap2, to place it on the map. Save basicmap.js and then reload index.php?option=com_js&task=basicMap. You should now see the same map, only with a red pin. When you click on the red pin, your map should look like this: Interactive Maps These two different maps show the basic functionality of getting Google Maps on your own website. These maps are very basic; you could easily create them at maps.google.com then embed them in a standard Joomla! article with the HTML code they provide you. However, you would not have the opportunity to add functions that interact with the other elements on your page. To do that, we will create some more HTML code and then write some MooTools-powered JavaScript to bridge our content with Google Maps. Open the /components/com_js/js.php file and add the following selectMap() function to the controller: function selectMap(){ $key = 'DoNotUseThisKeyGetOneFromCodeDotGoogleDotCom'; JHTML::_('behavior.mootools'); $document =& JFactory::getDocument(); $document->addScript('http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&v =2&key=' . $key); $document->addScript( JURI::base() . 'components/com_js/selectmap.js'); ?> <div id="map_canvas" style="width: 500px; height: 300px"></div> <select id="map_selections"> <option value="">(select...)</option> <option value="1200 K Street NW">Salad Surprises</option> <option value="1221 Connecticut Avenue NW">The Daily Dish</option> <option value="701 H Street NW">Sushi and Sashimi</option> </select><?php} This function is almost identical to basicMap() except for two things—selectmap.js is being added instead of basicmap.js, and a <select> element has been added beneath the <div>. The <select> element has an id that will be used in the JavaScript. The options of the <select> element are restaurants, with different addresses as values. The JavaScript code will bind a function to the onChange event so that the marker will move as different restaurants are selected.

0
0
3974

article-image-adding-calendar-web-site-using-drupal-6

Packt

28 Oct 2009

11 min read

Adding Calendar to a Web Site using Drupal 6

Packt

28 Oct 2009

11 min read

Adding new events to the calendar Good Eatin' Goal: Create an event that will be displayed on the calendar. Additional modules needed: Event (http://drupal.org/project/event). Basic steps In order to add an event, you must first install and activate the Event module in the Module manager as shown in the following screenshot: Activating the Event module will a create a new Event content type. There are also several settings that control how events are displayed and how time zones are handled. To modify the time zone settings, select Site configuration, then Events, and finally Timezone handling, from the Administer menu. Drupal will display a page similar to the following: You will want to customize these settings according to where the majority of your users live, and the types of events that you are holding. For example, if most of your users are in the U.S., 12 hour notation is probably appropriate, but if most of you users are in Europe, 24 hour notation is better. If the events are held online with a mix of users in different time zones, it would make sense to have the events displayed in the user's time zone. However, if the event is being held at a single site, it would make sense to use the local time of the event. For the Good Eatin' site, we will use the site's time zone for events, display the events in the event time zone, and use the 12 hour time notification. Before we can create an event, we must set the default time zone for the site. This is done by selecting Site configuration and then Date and time, from the Administer menu. The Good Eatin' restaurant is located in Colorado, so we will set the time zone to US/Mountain. Click Save configuration to save your changes. To add an event, select Create content and then Event, from the main Navigation menu. Enter a title and a description for the event, as shown in the following screenshot, and then set the start time and optionally the end time for the event. Click Save when you are happy with the event settings. Displaying events Good Eatin' Goal: Display events on the site in various formats including a block of upcoming events, a table of events, and a calendar of events. Additional modules needed: Event (http://drupal.org/project/event). Basic steps The Event module provides several methods for allowing customers to view events. We will explore each of these in turn. The easiest way to allow visitors to browse events is by using the event page, which is accessed by at http://yoursite.com/event. The page appears as follows: If you want the user to be able to access this page without knowing the URL in advance, you can create a menu item for the page. Open the Menu Manager by selecting on Site building and then menus, from the Administer menu. Select the menu that you want to add to the menu item and then click the Add item tab. Enter the information about the new menu item, as shown in the following screenshot, and then click Save when you are satisfied. The second method of presenting events to users is by using the upcoming events block. To add this, open the Blocks Manager by selecting Site building and then Blocks, from the Administer menu. Set the region for the List of upcoming events to Right sidebar. The new block will appear as follows: The final method of displaying calendar entries is a block showing upcoming events in a calendar view. To add this block, open the Block Manager by selecting Site building and then Blocks, from the Administer menu. Set the region for Calendar to browse events to Right sidebar. The display for the calendar will appear as follows: You can decide which of these methods to use for your own site, based on how the user will work with your site. Adding other content types to the event calendar Good Eatin' Goal: Discuss how to add custom content types to the event calendar. Additional modules needed: Event (http://drupal.org/project/event). An easy way of adding additional content types to your existing event calendar is by modifying the content type and then setting the Event calendar options. Open the Content Manager by selecting Content management and thenContent types, from the Administer menu. Edit the type that you want to add to the event calendar. Open the Event calendar section and modify the options, as shown here: If you prefer to have a calendar just for the type, you can use the Only in views for this type option. Save the changes to your content type, and the event calendar will be automatically updated. Creating events using CCK Good Eatin' Goal: Build events using the CCK module and the Date module, rather than the Event module, thereby giving additional control over the events. Additional modules needed: CCK (http://drupal.org/project/cck), Date (http://drupal.org/project/date). Basic steps Depending on your site, it may be more convenient to use CCK and the Date API to build dates. This strategy also gives you additional control over what information is included in the event and in the display. In addition, all required modules should be updated more quickly after each new Drupal release. However, you will need to carry out more initial setup for events and displays if you use this strategy. Install and activate the CCK and Date modules if you have not done so already. Open the Content Type Manager by selecting Content management and then Content types, from the Administer menu. Click Add content type to begin creating your new event type. We will call this type Event CCK to avoid conflicts with the Event module, as shown below: After you are satisfied with the information for the new content type, click Save Content Type to create the new event type. We now need to add fields to store the date and the time of the event. Click on the Add field link to begin the process. We will call the field event_time_cck and make the type a Datetime field so that we can enter both the day on which the event occurs and the time of day at which it starts, as shown in the following screenshot: Click Continue to save the new field. You will now need to select the display widget for the field. Text field with jQuery pop-up calendar is appropriate. Click Continue to complete the field definition. You can optionally modify various settings related to how the field is displayed. You should make the time Required. If you want to define end dates or times for the event, you should modify the To Date to Optional or Required. You can now create CCK-based events using the same techniques that we used to create other content—just select Create content and then Event CCK, from the main Navigation menu. Enter the information for the event, as shown in the following screenshot: When you are satisfied with the event, click Save to add the new event to the site's calendar. Good Eatin' Goal: Display a calendar that gives more details than a block view on a page. Additional modules needed: Calendar (http://drupal.org/project/calendar), Views(http://drupal.org/project/views), Date API (http://drupal.org/ project/date). Basic steps Now that we can create events using CCK, we need to display them on the site. We will begin by creating a page where visitors can browse all of the upcoming events using a convenient calendar. Begin by installing and activating the Views and Calendar modules if you have not done so already. Note that, some versions of Calendar released prior to June 28, 2008 require you to activate both Calendar and iCal at the same time. If you experience an error when installing the Calendar module, either upgrade to the latest development module or install both modules at the same time. The easiest way to build new views using the calendar is to clone the default calendar view and customize it to meet your needs. Go to the Views Manager by selecting Site building and then Views, from the Administer menu. Drupal will display a list of all of the views that have currently been established on the site. If you scroll the list, you will see the Default Node view: calendar as shown in the following screenshot: Temporarily enable the default view by clicking on the Enable link. After the view has been activated, a new set of links will appear, labeled: Edit, Export, Clone, and Disable. Click on the Clone link to make a copy of the calendar. Drupal will allow you to change the name and description of the view. Change the name to event_calendar and then click next to edit the view. The default settings for the view are shown in the following screenshot. We will edit several settings for our purposes. The first change we need to make is to create a new Filter by clicking on the + symbol next to the Filters label. Select the Node: Type filter, as shown in the following screenshot: In most cases, you should also select the Node: published or admin filter to prevent unauthorized access to private information. Click the Add button and set the allowable types to Event CCK. The next change we will need to make is to modify the fields by selecting Node: Updated date. Click Remove to remove this field from the view. Click the + next to the Fields label to add a new field. Select Content: Event Time for the new field to be added, as shown in the following screenshot: Click Add to save the changes. You will now need to configure the display of the field. In most cases, including this one, the defaults are acceptable. So we will just click Update to continue. You will also need to update the settings for the end time (value 2), as described above. The final change we need to make to the view is in the Arguments. Select the Date:Date link in the Arguments section. Drupal will display a list of parameters that you can use to customize the arguments. We will need to change this to use our Content Event time fields, and then click Update to save the changes. Now that all of the required changes have been made, click Save to finish building the View. We can now return to the list of all views by clicking on the List link, and disable the default calendar view by selecting the Disable link for the default calendar view. Now that our view has been completely set up, we can use it to browse our events. The calendar view, which we used as a starting point, provides several methods of displaying the content as shown below: You may use any of these views, or you can add more views according to your site's needs. If you do not want to use a display type, you can delete it. If you click on the Calendar Page display type and review the Page settings, you will see that a Page is provided, which can be accessed using the path http://yoursite.com/calendar. No menu is provided. You can either add a menu link here, or use the Menu Manager if desired. If you open the calendar page, the display appears as follows: The calendar view also provides several block displays that can be activated and added to your site via the Block Manager. These blocks include a Calendar block that is similar to the display provided by the event block, and a Legend block that can be used to allow visitors to understand the information in the calendar more easily. Summary Congratulations! You have now added calendar and events to your sites. These will provide valuable ways of communicating with your customers to ensure that they keep coming back to your web site and, more importantly, to your business.

0
0
1713

Packt

28 Oct 2009

28 min read

Installation of FreeNAS

Packt

28 Oct 2009

28 min read

0
0
5940

article-image-troubleshooting-freenas-server

Packt

28 Oct 2009

9 min read

Troubleshooting FreeNAS server

Packt

28 Oct 2009

9 min read

Where to Look for Log Information The first place to head whenever you have a configuration problem with FreeNAS is to the related configuration section and check that it is configured as expected. If, having double checked the settings, the problem persists, the next port of call is the log and information files in the Diagnostics: section of the web interface. Keep Diagnostics Section ExpandedBy default, the menu tree in the Diagnostics section of the web interface is collapsed, meaning the menu items aren't visible. To see the menu items, you need to click the word Diagnostics and the tree will expand. During initial setup and if you are doing lots of troubleshooting, you can save yourself a click by having the Diagnostics section permanently expanded. To set this option, go to System: Advanced and click on the Navigation - Keep diagnostics in navigation expanded tick box. The Diagnostics sections has five sections, the first two are logs and information pages about the status of the FreeNAS server. The other three are networking diagnostic tools and information. Diagnostics: Logs This section collates all the different log files that are generated by the FreeNAS server into one convenient place. There are several tabs, one for each different service to log file type. Some of the information can be very technical, especially in the System tab. However, with some key information they can become more readable. The tabs are as follows: Tab Meaning System When FreeBSD (the underlying OS of FreeNAS) boots, various log entries are recorded here about the hardware of the server and various messages about the boot process. FTP This shows the activity on the FTP server including successful logins and failed logins. RSYNC The log information for the RSYNC server is divided into three sections: Server, Client, and Local. Depending on which type of RSYNC operation you are interested, click the appropriate tab. SSHD Here you will find log entries from the SSH server including some limited startup information and records of logins and failed login attempts. SMARTD This tab logs the output of the S.M.A.R.T daemon. Daemon Any other minor system service like the built-in HTTP server, the Apple Filing Protocol server and Windows networking server (Samab) will log information to this page. UPnP The log information from the FreeNAS UPnP server called "MediaTomb" is displayed here. The logging can be quite verbose so careful attention is needed when reading it. Don't be distracted by entires such as "INFO: Config: option not found:" as this is just the server logging that it will be using a default value for that particular attribute. Settings The settings tab allows you to change how the log information is displayed including the sort order and the number of entries shown. What is a Daemon?In UNIX speak, a Daemon is a system service. It is a program that runs in the background performing certain tasks. The Daemons in FreeNAS don't work with the users in an interactive mode (via the monitor, mouse, and keyboard) and as such need a place to log the results (or problems)of their actives. The FreeNAS Daemons are launched automatically by FreeBSD when it boots and some are dependent on being enabled in the web interface. Understanding Diagnostics Logs: System The most complicated of all the log pages is the System log page. Here, FreeBSD logs information about the system, its hardware, and the startup process. At first, this page can seem intimidating but with a little help, this page can be very helpful particularly in tracking down hardware or driver related problems. 50 Log Entries Might Not be EnoughThe default number of log entries shown on the Diagnostics: Logs page is 50. For most situations, this will be sufficient but there can be times when it is not enough. For example in the Diagnostics: Logs: System tab, the total number of log entries made during the boot up process is more than 50. If you want to see how much system memory has been recognized by FreeBSD, you won't find it within the standard 50 entries. The solution is to increase the Number of log entries to show parameter on the Diagnostics: Logs: Setting tab. The best way to learn to read the Diagnostics: Logs: System page is by example, below are several different log entry examples including logs about the CPU, memory, disks, and disk controllers: kernel: FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE-p11 #0: Wed Mar 12 18:17:49 CET 2008 This first entry shows the heritage of the FreeNAS server. It is based on FreeBSD and in this particular case, we see that this version of FreeNAS is using FreeBSD 6.2. There are plans (which may have already become reality) to use FreeBSD version 7.0 as the base for FreeNAS. kernel: CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 1.70GHz (1680.52-MHz 686-class CPU) Here, the type of CPU that was detected by the FreeBSD is displayed. In this case, it is an Intel Xeon CPU running at 1.7GHz. kernel: FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 2 CPUs If your system has more than one CPU or is a dual core machine then you will see an entry in the log file (like the one above) recognizing the second CPU. If your machine has Hyper-threading technology, then the second logical processor will be reported like this: Logical CPUs per core:2 Apr 1 11:06:00 kernel: real memory = 268435456 (256 MB)Apr 1 11:06:00 kernel: avail memory = 252907520 (241 MB) These log entries show how much memory the system has detected. The difference in size between real memory and available memory is the difference between the amount of RAM physically installed in the computer and the amount of memory left over after the FreeBSD kernel is loaded. kernel: atapci0: <Intel PIIX4 UDMA33 controller> port 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6,0x170-0x177,0x376,0x1050-0x105f at device 7.1 on pci0 kernel: ata0: <ATA channel 0> on atapci0 kernel: ata1: <ATA channel 1> on atapci0 For disks to work on your FreeNAS server, a disk controller is needed and it will be either a standard ATA/IDE controller, a SATA controller or a SCSI controller. Above are the log entries for a standard ATA controller built into the motherboard. You can see that it is an Intel controller and that two channels have been seen (the primary and the secondary). kernel: atapci1: <SiS 181 SATA150 controller> irq 17 at device 5.0 on pci0kernel: ata2: <ATA channel 0> on atapci1kernel: ata3: <ATA channel 1> on atapci1 Like the ATA controller listed a moment ago, SATA controllers are all recognized at boot up. Here is a SiS 181 SATA 150 controller with two channels. They are listed as devices ata2 and ata3 as ata0 and ata1 are used by the standard ATA/IDE controller. kernel: mpt0: <LSILogic 1030 Ultra4 Adapter> irq 17 at device 16.0 on pci0 Like IDE and SATA controllers, all recognized SCSI drivers are listed in the boot up system log. Here, the controller is an LSILogic 1030 Ultra4. kernel: ad0: 476940MB <WDC WD5000AAJB-00YRA0 12.01C02> at ata0-master UDMA100kernel: ad4: 476940MB <Seagate ST3500320AS SD04> at ata2-master SATA150 Once the disk controllers are recognized by the system, FreeBSD can search to see which disks are attached. Above is an example of a Western Digital 500GB hard drive using the standard ATA100 interface at 100MB/s. There is also a 500GB Seagate drive connected using the SATA interface. acd0: CDROM <TOSHIBA CD-ROM XM-7002B/1005> at ata1 as master UDMA33 When the CDROM (which is normally attached to an ATA/IDE controller) is recognized, it will look like the above. kernel: da0 at ahd0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0kernel: da0: <MAXTOR ATLAS10K4_73WLS DFL0> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-3 devicekernel: da0: 320.000MB/s transfers (160.000MHz, offset 127, 16bit), Tagged Queueing Enabledkernel: da0: 70149MB (143666192 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 8942C) SCSI addressing is a little more complicated than that of ATA/IDE. In SCSI land, you have a controller, a channel (bus), a disk (target), and the Logical Unit Number (LUN). The example above shows that a disk (which has been assigned the device name da0) is found on the controller ahd0 on bus 0, as target 0 with the LUN 0. SCSI controllers can have multiple buses and multiple targets. Further down, you can see that the disk is a MAXTOR 73GB SCSI-3 disk. kernel: da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0kernel: da0: <Verbatim Store 'n' Go 1.30> Removable Direct Access SCSI-2 devicekernel: da0: 40.000MB/s transferskernel: da0: 963MB (1974271 512 byte sectors: 64H 32S/T 963C) If you are using a USB flash disk for storing the configuration information, it will most likely appear in the log file as a type of SCSI disk. The above example shows a 1GB Verbatim Store 'n' Go disk. kernel: lnc0: <PCNet/PCI Ethernet adapter> irq 18 at device 17.0 on pci0kernel: lnc0: Ethernet address: 00:0c:29:a5:9a:28 Another important device that needs to work correctly on your system is the network interface card. Like disk controllers and disks, it will be logged in the log file when FreeBSD recognizes it. Above is an example of an AMD Lance/PCNet-based Ethernet adapter. Each Ethernet card has a unique address know as the Ethernet address or the MAC address. It is made up of 6 numbers specified using a colon notation. Once found, FreeBSD queries the card to find its MAC address and logs the result. In the above example, it is "00:0c:29:a5:9a:28". Converting between Device Names and the Real World In the SCSI example above, the SCSI controller listed is ahd0. The trick to understanding these log entries better is to know how to interpret the device name ahd0. First of all ahd0 means it is a device using the ahd driver and it is the first one in the system (with numbering starting from 0). So what is a ahd? The first place to look is further up in the log file. There should be an entry like: kernel: ahd0: <Adaptec 39320 Ultra320 SCSI adapter> irq 11 at device 1.0 on pci2 This shows that the particular device is an Adaptec 39320 SCSI 3 controller. You can also find out more about the the ahd driver (and all FreeBSD drivers) at: http://www.freebsd.org/releases/6.2R/hardware-i386.html Search for ahd and you will find which controllers this driver supports (in this case, they are all controllers from Adaptec. If you click on the link provided, you will be taken to a specific help page about this driver. When FreeNAS moves to FreeBSD 7, then the relevant web page will be: http://www.freebsd.org/releases/7.0R/hardware.html.

0
0
11206

article-image-installing-alfresco-software-development-kit-sdk

Packt

28 Oct 2009

6 min read

Installing Alfresco Software Development Kit (SDK)

Packt

28 Oct 2009

6 min read

Obtaining the SDK If you are running the Enterprise network, it is likely that the SDK has been provided to you as a binary. Alternatively, you can check out the Enterprise source code and build it yourself. In the Enterprise SVN repository, specific releases are tagged. So if you wanted 2.2.0, for example, you'd check out V2.2.0-ENTERPRISE-FINAL. The Enterprise SVN repository for the Enterprise network is password-protected. Consult your Alfresco representative for the URL, port, and credentials that are needed to obtain the Enterprise source code. Labs network users can either download the SDK as a binary from SourceForge (https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=143373&package_id=189441) or check out the Labs source code and build it. The SVN URL for the Labs source code is svn://svn.alfresco.com. In the Labs repository, nothing is tagged. You must check out HEAD. Step-by-Step: Building Alfresco from Source Regardless of whether you are using Enterprise or Labs, if you've decided to build from the source it is very easy to do it. At a high level, you simply check out the source and then run Ant. If you've opted to use the pre-compiled binaries, skip to the next section. Otherwise, let's use Ant to create the same ZIP/TAR file that is available on the download page. To do that, follow these steps: Check out the source from the appropriate SVN repository, as mentioned earlier. Set the TOMCAT_HOME environment variable to the root of your Apache Tomcat install directory. Navigate to the root of the source directory, then run the default Ant target: ant build.xml ant build.xml It will take a few minutes to build everything. When it is done, run the distribute task like this: ant -f continuous.xml distribute Again, it may take several minutes for this to run. When it is done, you should see several archives in the build|dist directory. For example, running this Ant task for Alfresco 3.0 Labs produces several archives. The subset relevant to the article includes: alfresco-labs-sdk-*.tar.gz alfresco-labs-sdk-*.zip alfresco-labs-tomcat-*.tar.gz alfresco-labs-tomcat-*.zip alfresco-labs-war-*.tar.gz alfresco-labs-war-*.zip alfresco-labs-wcm-*.tar.gz alfresco-labs-wcm-*.zip You should extract the SDK archive somewhere handy. The next step will be to import the SDK into Eclipse. Setting up the SDK in Eclipse Nothing about Alfresco requires you to use Eclipse or any other IDE. But Eclipse is very widely used and the Alfresco SDK distribution includes Eclipse projects that can easily be imported into Eclipse, so that's what these instructions will cover. In addition to the Alfresco JARs, dependent JARs, Javadocs, and source code, the SDK bundle has several Eclipse projects. Most of the Eclipse projects are sample projects showing how to write code for a particular area of Alfresco. Two are special, however. The SDK AlfrescoEmbedded project and the SDK AlfrescoRemote project reference all of the JARs needed for the Java API and the Web Services API respectively. The easiest way to make sure your own Eclipse project has everything it needs to compile is to import the projects bundled with the SDK into your Eclipse workspace, and then add the appropriate SDK projects to your project's build path. Step-by-Step: Importing the SDK into Eclipse Every developer has his or her own favorite way of configuring tools. If you are going to work with multiple versions of Alfresco, you should use version-specific Eclipse workspaces. For example, you might want to have a workspace-alfresco-2.2 workspace as well as a workspace-alfresco-3.0 workspace, each with the corresponding Alfresco SDK projects imported. Then, if you need to test customizations against a different version of the Alfresco SDK, all you have to do is switch your workspace, import your customization project if it isn't in the workspace already, and build it. Let's go ahead and set this up. Follow these steps: In Eclipse, select File|Switch Workspace or specify a new workspace location. This will be your workspace for a specific version of the Alfresco SDK so use a name such as workspace-alfresco-3.0. Eclipse will restart with an empty workspace. Make sure the Java compiler compliance level preference is set to 5.0 (Window|Preferences|Java|Compiler). If you forget to do that, Eclipse won't be able to build the projects after they are imported. Select File|Import|Existing Projects into Workspace. For the root directory, specify the directory where the SDK was uncompressed. For the root directory, specify the directory where the SDK was uncompressed. You want the root SDK directory, not the Samples directory. Select all of the projects that are listed and click Import. After the import, Eclipse should be able to build all projects cleanly. If not, double-check the compiler compliance level. If that is set but there are still errors, make sure you imported all SDK projects including SDK AlfrescoEmbedded and SDK AlfrescoRemote. Now that the files are in the workspace, take a look at the Embedded project. That's quite a list of dependent JAR files! The Alfresco-specific JARs all start with alfresco-. It depends on what you are doing, of course, but the JAR that is referenced most often is likely to be alfresco-repository.jar because that's where the bulk of the API resides. The SDK comes with zipped source code and Javadocs, which are both useful references (although the Javadocs are pretty sparse). It's a good idea to tell Eclipse where those files are, so you can drill in to the Alfresco source when debugging. To do that, right-click on the Alfresco JAR, and then select Properties. You'll see panels for Java Source Attachment and Javadoc Location that you can use to associate the JAR with the appropriate source and Javadoc archives. The following image shows the Java Source Attachment for alfresco-repository.jar: The following image shows the Javadoc Location panel for alfresco-repository.jar. Source and Javadoc are provided for each of the Alfresco JARs, as shown in the following table. Note that source and Javadoc for everything is available. This is open source software after all, not just all bundled with the SDK: Alfresco JAR Source archive Javadoc archive alfresco-core.jar Src|core-src.zip Doc|api|core-doc.zip alfresco-remote-api.jar Src|remote-api-src.zip Doc|api|remote-api-doc.zip alfresco-web-client.jar src|web-client-src.zip doc|api|web-client-doc.zip alfresco-repository.jar src|repository-src.zip doc|api|repository-doc.zip

0
0
1840

article-image-working-report-builder-microsoft-sql-server-2008-part-1

Packt

28 Oct 2009

16 min read

Working with the Report Builder in Microsoft SQL Server 2008: Part 1

Packt

28 Oct 2009

16 min read

The Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Report Builder 2.0 tool can be installed from a standalone installer available at this Microsoft site, http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/f/6/af64f194-8b7e-4118-b040-4c515a7dbc46/ReportBuilder.msi. The same file is also available from a collection of download files when you access the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Feature Pack, October 2008 at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=228DE03F-3B5A-428A-923F-58A033D316E1&displaylang=en. Report Builder overview In the present version of SQL Server 2008 [Enterprise Evaluation edition] there are two Report Builders available. Report Builder 1.0, which has remained as a program that can be launched from the Report Manager, and the new Report Builder 2.0, which is a stand alone report authoring tool that needs to be independently launched. Although Report Builder 1.0 can access Report Models built with Visual Studio 2008 and the Report Manager, it cannot be used to create reports using those models. It also does not work with Reports generated by Visual Studio 2008/BIDS/Report Builder 2.0. The errors can be summarized as follows: When you try to access the Report Server 2008 from the link provided on the Report Builder 1.0 interface you get the following error message: Specifying credentials in a URL is not supported When you try to open a report created using VS2008/BIDS/ReportBuilder2.0 using the Open Report… and Open File… navigational items in Report Builder 1.0 you get the following error message: System.IO.StreamReader: The Report element was not found Report Builder 1.0 allows you to access Report Models created with VS2008/BIDS/Report Manager and even allows you create a report in design view but this report cannot be processed on the Report Server. If you try to do so, you get the following error message: MemoryStream length must be non-negative and less than 2^31-1-origin. Parameter name: offset; Remote GDI stream version: ?. Expected version: 11.0.1 In this article the Report Builder 2.0 interface will be described along with the new features that are incorporated into this version. Report Builder 2.0 is admirably suited to address all items in the Report Definition Language of 2008. One of the important features of Report Builder 2.0 is the empowerment it provides business users to create ad hoc reports using the Report Models built on the databases they use. In this article you will be learning mostly about the Report Builder 2.0 interface details and working with it to create reports or modify them. It may be noted that Report Builder generates 2008 compliant RDL files as described in http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/5/7/6575f1c8-4607-48d2-941d-c69622e11c32/RDL_spec_08.pdf and therefore, cannot work with reports generated using 2005 technology. Report Builder 2.0 user interface description Report Builder is a report authoring tool and the basic procedure for authoring a report consists of the following steps: Report planning Connecting to a source of data Extracting a dataset from source Designing the report and data binding Previewing the report Although deploying the report is not included in the above, Report Builder can deploy the report as well. It is not always necessary to deploy a completed report, as any part of a report definition file can be deployed. This makes modifying a report on the server very flexible. In the following sections, the various parts of the Report Builder interface will be described starting at the very top and going to the bottom of the interface The menu for file operations Report Builder 2.0 can be accessed from Start | All Programs | Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Report Builder | Report Builder 2.0. This brings up the Report Builder Interface 2.0 as shown with the design area containing two icons: Table or Matrix and Chart. Each of these will launch a related wizard which will step you through the various tasks. The Report Builder 2.0 interface is very similar to Office 2007. More than one instance of Report Builder can be launched. At the very top of the following screen shown you have the undo and redo controls as well as a save icon. When you click on the save icon the Save as Report window gets displayed as shown. Here you provide a name for the report. The default save extension is *.rdl and it will be saved to the report server. It may also be persisted to a folder on your machine. Clicking on the Office Button (top left) opens a drop-down window shown in the following screenshot: In this window, you can carry out a number of tasks such as creating a new report, opening an existing report, saving a report, and saving a report with a different name. The Save button saves it to the default location seen earlier and Save as invokes the same window to save the report with a different name as seen earlier displying the report server instance as the Save to location. The Recent Documents pane shows the more recent reports created with this tool. New allows you to create a new report. When you click on Open, the following Open Report window gets displayed with the default location http://Hodentek2:8080/ReportServer_SANGAM/My Reports. You will also notice the message: This folder is not available because the My Reports feature is not enabled on the computer. Also the Open Reports window allows you look for reports with the extension .rdl. Therefore, unless the My Reports feature is enabled, this window is unusable. This is supposed to be possible from Report Manager but there are no controls in Report Manager that would do this. An alternative was suggested by one of the MSDN forum moderators (see http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/sqlreportingservices/thread/6c695160-29e8-4185-be6d-5fe027a6975c/). Hands-on exercise (Part 2) will describe how you may enable My Reports. The idea of My Reports is similar to My Documents where each user can keep his reports. When the Options button (in the previous screenshot) is clicked it opens the window Report Builder Options window with two tabbed pages Settings and Resource shown as follows: Here you can view, as well as modify, Report Builder settings. The defaults are more than adequate to work with the examples in this book. Clicking on the Resources button brings up this interesting window which enables you to interact with Microsoft regarding SSRS activities, concerns, community, and so on. If you are serious about Reporting Services, these are very valuable links. The About button when clicked can provide you with Report Builder version information. The ribbon The main menu consists of Home, Insert, and View menu items which are part of the "ribbon". The ribbon introduced by Microsoft in Office 2007 is actually a container for other toolbar items. The ribbon is the replacement for the classic menus, toolbars, and is supposed to be more efficient and discoverable by the user. In fact you see a lot more on the "ribbon" than in the classic menu. Home The next figure shows the Home menu with its toolbar arranged from left to right and divided into sections. The Run toolbar item with the title Views when clicked would run the report open in the design view (in fact, even without a report open in the design view, the report can be run. The result would be the current date and time getting displayed in the center of the screen of an untitled report which has just ExecutionTime as the only item in the report). The Font, Paragraph, Border, and Number toolbar sections become enabled if parts of a report need editing. The formatting of textboxes in the report, the formatting of numbers in the report, and the alignment of components in the layout can all be independently managed using these toolbar items. Insert When you click on the Insert menu item on the "ribbon", the tabbed page for this item is displayed as shown in the following screenshot: It has four sections: Data Regions, Report Items, Subreports, and Header & Footer. These are all the normal items that are used either individually or together to make up a report. There can be more than one data region in a report. Data Regions In the Data Regions section you have both the Tablix (Table, Matrix, and List) and the graphic controls that can be bound to data—the Chart and the Gauge. Gauge is new in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008. Chart and gauge implementations are the off shoot of collaboration with Dundas (http://www.dundas.com/). Report Builder is built in such a way that the dataset must be defined before any of the data regions are added to the report body. For the purpose of describing the various data regions in this section, it is assumed (in order to get the screen shots shown here) that a dataset has been defined and the default wizards on the design surface have been removed. Table The Table is meant for displaying data retrieved from a database either all data detailed in groups or a combination (some grouped and some detailed) of both. It has a fixed number of columns which can be adjusted at design time. The table length expands to accommodate the rows. Data can be grouped by a single field or by multiple fields. Expression designer can be used in grouping as well. The grouping is carried out by creating row groups. Static rows can be added for row headings (labels) and totals. Aggregates for groups can be added. Both detailed data as well as grouped data can be hidden initially and the user can interactively reveal the data needed by drill downs. When you click on Insert | Table | Insert Table and then click on the design surface you can add a table to the design area. The table appears as shown with handles to adjust its dimensions. The table can be dragged to any other location on the design surface (the body of the report) as well. After placing the table, which by default has three columns and two rows, when you click on any other part of the design area you will see the table as shown. When you hover over the cell marked Data on the table you will see a little icon. This icon is a minimized version of the dataset fields. The grayed out feature that surrounds the table indicate the position of the rows and columns of the table. It also shows such other features as whether it is a detail, or whether it is a group. In the case of group, within a group the feature would indicate the nesting schematically as well. When you want to increase the size of a column or a row you can drag the double headed arrow that gets displayed when your cursor is placed between two columns or between two cells as shown. When you click on the dataset icon in the cell Data you get a drop-down list containing the fields in the dataset as shown. You can choose any of the fields to occupy the cell you clicked and the corresponding header will be added to the table. In this particular dataset there are nine fields and you can choose any of them to occupy the cell. When you right-click on a cell, a drop-down menu will be available. It can be used for the following: Work with the highlighted textbox (each cell of the table is a textbox) including to copy, cut, delete, and paste contents. Work with the properties of the Textbox. Populate the textbox with an expression using the expression builder. The expression builder gets displayed when fx Expression is clicked. Use Select to select the body or the Tablix. Insert a new column or a new row. Columns can be added to the right or the left of the clicked cell and rows can be added above or below the clicked cell. Delete columns and rows. Add a group. Both row and column groups can be added. When you click on the properties of the textbox, the Text Box Properties window is displayed. The textbox has several properties which are arranged on the left as a list with each item having its own page as shown. The Help button on any of the pages will take you directly to the definition of the properties and is extremely useful. In the General page, you can make changes to the elements in the Name, Value, and Sizing options page as shown. The Value is one which you choose among the column values (from the drop-down) from the dataset. You may also add a text for the ToolTip, which will display this text when the report is generated and this cell is accessed by hovering over it in the report. Alternatively you can set the Value and Tooltip using fx—the button that brings up the Expression window. In the Number page you can set the number and date data type formatting options for the cell that contains a number or a date. This is what you normally would find in most Microsoft products such as Excel and Access. In the Alignment page you can choose the vertical and horizontal alignments as well as the padding of the textbox content from the edges of the cell. Similarly the Font and Border properties are the same ones you find in most Microsoft products. The Fill property lets you add or change background color to the report as well as add a graphic element. The graphic element can be embedded, external, or originate from a database (being one of the fields accessed). Expressions can be developed to set a desired color for the Fill. The Visibility of the textbox can be any of Show, Hide, Show or Hide based on an expression. In each of these cases the visibility can be toggled when another table cell is clicked (which can be chosen). This page also gives access to the Expression window which is similar to the MS Access expression builder. The Interactive Sorting page allows you to define interactive sorting options on the textbox. Matrix Matrix provides a similar functionality (roughly speaking rows against columns) to cross-tab reports in MS Access (http://aspalliance.com/1041_Creating_a_Crosstab_Report_in_Visual_Studio_2005_Using_Crystal_Reports.all) and Pivot Table dynamic views (http://www.aspfree.com/c/a/MS-SQL-Server/On-Accessing-Data-From-An-OLAP-Server-Using-MS-Excel/3/). The matrix should have at least one row group and one column group. The matrix can expand both ways to accommodate the data, horizontally for column groups and vertically for row groups. The matrix cells (intersection of rows and columns) display summary information (aggregates). When you click on Insert Matrix in the Insert menu and drop it on the design area of Report Builder 2.0, it gets displayed as shown in the following figure: Now if you click inside the boundary of the (2x2) empty matrix you will see more features of the matrix as shown in the following screenshot. The basic elements are the ColumnGroup (Column Groups), the RowGroup (Row Groups), and the Data. The group information is also displayed as shown by overlaid lines pointing to them. There needs to be a minimum of one group and one column for the matrix and there could be a hierarchy of column and row groups. The row and column group cells have their own properties which can be displayed when you right-click on them as shown in the next screenshot for the row group. When you right-click on the cell marked Rows, the following drop-down menu pops up. In addition to the properties that you can set for the textbox in that cell, you have additional submenu items that work with the grouping and totaling. These are part of representing data in a matrix. Each of the Tablix for the Rows and Columns has the additional submenu items which are shown here for the Rows. Similar ones apply for the Columns as well. These are useful when you want to create nested groups. With the Matrix design interface in SQL Server 2005 this would not have been possible. Add Group Row Group Parent Group... Child Group... -------------------- Adjacent Above Adjacent Below Row Group Delete Group Group Properties Add Total Before After In addition to the above, each of the items Rows and Columns cells has the following items as well. These specify how new columns and rows are inserted with reference to the current cell as shown. The differences are due to the geometrical positions that are allowed for the new columns or rows as shown. For the "Columns" cell: Insert Column Inside Group-Left Inside Group-Right ------------------ Outside Group-Left Outside Group-Right Insert Row Inside Group-Above Inside Group-Below ------------------ Outside Group_Above For the "Rows" cell: Insert Column Inside Group-Left Inside Group-Right ------------------ Outside Group-Left Insert Row Inside Group-Above Inside Group-Below ------------------ Outside Group_Above Outside Group_Below Besides using a cell as a starting point, one could also use the rows as a whole or column as a whole to add further structure as shown in the next figure. Of course you need to use the proper submenu option to arrive at a particular matrix structure. Clicking at the indicated points would let you choose the structure you want for your matrix. If you click at the location shown for the Tablix you could choose to the delete the whole matrix. The Tablix graphical arrangement gives you the maximum flexibility in extending the matrix in 2-dimensions. List The list data region repeats for each row of data. List element provides a single container for the data which can be used to generate what are called Free Form Reports. In this kind of report there is no rigid structure such as a table for the data. You can also place a list inside another list or even a chart inside a list. You can drag a column from a dataset and drop it into the list. You can work with the list using the properties of the Rectangle it contains as well as its Tablix properties. As described earlier, the design interface is very flexible and you can leverage all features provided by the Tablix structure like displaying details and adding groups either independent, or nested. The properties pages described earlier allow you to sort and filter grouped data. When you drop a List on the design surface you will see just a single cell as shown. You can change its dimensions to suit your needs. When you click on the List you can access its handles as shown: When you add a List, there is one column and one row (just one cell). This can be extended in both directions by choosing the appropriate submenu items. These can be displayed by right-clicking on the handles as shown:

0
0
5668

article-image-managing-manufacturers-vendors-and-product-categories-joomla-e-commerce-virtuemart

Packt

28 Oct 2009

7 min read

Managing Manufacturers, Vendors, and Product Categories with Joomla! E-Commerce VirtueMart

Packt

28 Oct 2009

7 min read

We are going to add and edit a lot of information for manufacturers, vendors, and product categories. Actually, in this article, our VirtueMart shop will really take shape with products we want to sell. Catalogue management The product catalog for an online shop comprises of the products we sell in the shop. Whatever products we want to sell should be added to this product catalog first. Once products are added to the catalog, customers can browse the products and decide to buy whatever they need. Therefore, managing the catalog is one of the primary tasks of the shop owner. Products that we add to the catalog need to be organized to help customers easily find the right products. In VirtueMart, customers can sort the products by product categories and manufacturers. Therefore, before adding products to the catalog, we will look into managing manufacturers and product categories. Managing manufacturers In VirtueMart, whenever we add a product to the catalog, we also need to assign a manufacturer for that product. In reality, every product has a manufacturer, and for better management of the shop, we should be able to find products by their manufacturer. Therefore, first step will be to identify the manufacturers and enter their information in VirtueMart store. We can also categorize the manufactures as publishers, software developers, and so on. Adding a manufacturer category There is a default manufacturer category for use in VirtueMart. We can use that default category for creating a manufacturer. However, when we are selling large number of products from a large number of manufacturers, classifying them into categories will be convenient for managing the manufacturers. For adding a manufacturer, in the VirtueMart administration panel, click on Manufacturer | Add Manufacturer Category. This shows Manufacturer Category Form: In the Manufacturer Category Form, provide information for the Category Name and the Category Description fields. Once these are provided, click the Save icon in the toolbar to save the manufacturer category. In the same process, you can add as many categories as you want. Adding a manufacturer For adding a manufacturer, in the VirtueMart administration panel, select Manufacturer | Add Manufacturer. This shows Add Information screen: In the Add Information screen, type the manufacturer's name, their URL, email address, and a brief description. In the Manufacturer Category field, select the category. The drop-down list will show the manufacturer categories you created earlier. Once all the information is provided in this screen, click the Save icon in the toolbar to save the manufacturer information. Listing the manufacturer categories Once you have added the manufacturer categories, you can view the list of manufacturer categories by selecting Manufacturer | List Manufacturer Categories. This shows Manufacturer Category List screen: In the Manufacturer Category List screen, you will see all manufacturer categories you have created. From this screen, you can add a new category by clicking the New icon in the toolbar. Similarly, you can remove a category by clicking on the trash icon in Remove column, or by selecting the categories and clicking the Remove icon in the toolbar. You can edit a category by clicking on the category name. To view the list of manufacturers, click on the Manufacturer List link in the Manufacturers column, or select Manufacturer | List Manufacturers. This shows Manufacturer List screen displaying all manufacturers you have added: From the Manufacturer List screen, you can create a new manufacturer, remove one or more manufacturers, and edit any manufacturer. For editing a manufacturer, click on the manufacturer's name or the Update link in Admin column. This will bring up the Add Information screen again. You can also create a new manufacturer by clicking the New icon in the toolbar. From the Manufacturer Category List screen, you may think that clicking on the Manufacturer List link against each category will display the manufacturers added to that category only. Ideally, this should be the case. However, until VirtueMart 1.1.2, it shows the list of manufacturers from all the categories. We hope this will be fixed in the upcoming releases of VirtueMart. Managing vendors The idea of multiple vendors is something what you can see on Amazon.com. Different vendors add their products to sell, when the order is placed, the store notifies the vendor to fulfill the order. The main store usually gets a commission from the vendor for each sell made through the store. However, VirtueMart's vendors feature is still in its infancy and does not yet function properly. You can add multiple vendors in VirtueMart, and assign products to the vendors. However, adding vendors has no effect on selling any product on the VirtueMart store, except when applying different vendor-specific tax rates and shopper groups. At the moment, it also helps to identify products from different vendors. In the following sections, you will see how to add and manage vendors. Vendor category Like manufacturers, you can also create vendor categories. For creating vendor categories, go to Vendor | Add Vendor Category. This displays Vendor Category Form: In the Vendor Category Form, type the name of the category and its description. Then click the Save icon in the toolbar. You can add as many categories as you want. Before trying to add vendor categories, first plan how you are going to categorize your vendors (for example, based on the product they sell or their location). Have a full category tree on hand and then start creating categories. Adding vendor Once you have created the necessary vendor categories, you can proceed to adding vendors. For adding vendors, click on Vendor | Add Vendor. This displays the Add Information screen: CautionNote that there is a warning sign at the top of Add Information screen. It warns you about using the vendor feature as it is in the 'Alpha' or pre-mature stage. Also note that we have used Simple Layout for displaying it. If you try adding a vendor from Extended Layout, you will open up an edit screen for existing vendor information, which you already added during the initial configuration of the shop. Up until VirtueMart 1.1.2, a bug has been encountered and which will hopefully be fixed in future releases when it crosses 'Alpha' stage. The Add Information screen shows three tabs: Store, Store Information, and Contact Information. From the Store tab, add the vendor's store name, company name, logo, web site URL, minimum purchase order value, and minimum amount for free shipping. You can also configure the currency symbol, decimal points, decimal symbol, thousand separator, positive format, and negative format. In the Store Information tab (seen in the previous screenshot), you can add the address of the store, city, state/province/region, zip/postal code, phone, currency and vendor category. The vendor categories you have created earlier will be available in Vendor Category drop-down list. In the Contact Information tab (seen in the previous screenshot), you can set the contact details of the vendor, such as name, title, phone, fax, email. You can also add a brief description of the vendor which will be displayed in the vendor details page in the store. Type a brief description in the Description rich-text editing box. In the Terms of Service rich-text editing box, provide terms of service applicable for that vendor. Once information in all the three tabs are provided, click the Save icon in the toolbar to add the vendor.

0
0
3111

article-image-how-create-tax-rule-magento

Packt

27 Oct 2009

11 min read

How to create a Tax Rule in Magento

Packt

27 Oct 2009

11 min read

In this article by William Rice, we will see how to create Tax Rules in Magento. In the real world, the tax rate that you pay is based on three things: location, product type, and purchaser type. In Magento, we can create Tax Rules that determine the amount of tax that a customer pays, based upon the shipping address, product class, and customer class. When you buy a product, you sometimes pay sales tax on that product. The sales tax that you pay is based on: Where you purchased the product from. Tax rules vary in different cities, states, and countries. The type of product that you purchased. For example, many places don't tax clothing purchases. And, some places tax only some kinds of clothing. This means that you must be able to apply different tax rates to different kinds of products. The type of purchaser you are. For example, if you buy a laser printer for your home, it is likely that you will pay sales tax. This is because you are a retail customer. If you buy the same printer for your business, in most places you will not pay sales tax. This is because you are a business customer. The amount of the purchase. For example, some places tax clothing purchases only above a specific amount. Anatomy of a Tax Rule A Tax Rule is a combination of the tax rate, shipping address, product class, customer class, and amount of purchase. A Tax Rule states that you pay this amount of tax if you are this class of purchaser, and you bought this class of product for this amount, and are shipping it to this place. The components of a Tax Rule are shown in the following screenshot. This screen is found under Sales | Tax | Manage Tax Rules | Add New Tax Rule. You will see the Name of the Tax Rule while working in the backend. Customer Tax Class Customer Tax Class is a type of customer that is making a purchase. Before creating a Tax Rule, you will need to have at least one Customer Tax Class. Magento provides you with a Tax Rule called Retail Customer. If you serve different types of customers—retail, business, and nonprofit—you will need to create different Customer Tax Classes. Product Tax Class Product Tax Class is a type of Product that is being purchased. When you create a Product, you will assign a Product Tax Class to that Product. Magento comes with two Product Tax Classes:Taxable Goods and Shipping. The class Shipping is applied to shipping charges because some places charge sales tax on shipping. If your customer's sales tax is different for different types of Products, then you will need to create a Product Tax Class for each type of Product. Tax Rate Tax Rate is a combination of place, or tax zone, and percentage. A zone can be a country, state, or zip code. Each zone that you specify can have up to five sales tax percentages. For example, in the default installation of Magento, there is one tax rate for the zone New York. This is 8.3750 percent, and applies to retail customers. The following window can be found at Sales | Tax | Manage Tax Zones & Rates and then clicking on US-NY-*-Rate 1: So in the screenshot of our Tax Rule, the Tax Rate US-NY-*-Rate 1 doesn't mean "a sales tax of 1 percent." It means "Tax rate number 1 for New York, which is 8.3750 percent." In this scenario, New York charges 8.3750 percent sales tax on retail sales. If New York does not charge sales tax for wholesale customers, and you sell to wholesale customers, then you will need to create another Tax Rate for New York: Whenever a zone has different sales taxes for different types of products or customers, you will need to create different Tax Rates for that zone. Priority If several Tax Rules try to apply several Tax Rates at the same time, how should Magento handle them? Should it add them all together? Or, should it apply one rate, calculate the total, and then apply the second rate to that total? That is, should Magento add them or compound them? For example, suppose you sell a product in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Further suppose that according to the Tax Rule for Pennsylvania, the sales tax for that item is 6 percent, and that the Tax Rule for Philadelphia adds another 1 percent. In this case, you want Magento to add the two sales taxes. So, you would give the two Tax Rates the same Priority. By contrast, Tax Rates that belong to Tax Rules with different Priorities are compounded. The Tax Rate with the higher Priority (the lower number) is applied, and the next higher Priority is applied to that total, and so on. Sort Order Sort Order determines the Tax Rules' position in the list of Tax Rules. Why create Tax Rules now? Why create a Tax Rule now, before adding our first Product? When you add a Product to your store, you put that Product into a Category, assign an Attribute Set, and select a Tax Class for that Product. By default, Magento comes with two Product Tax Classes and one Tax Rule already created. The Product Tax Classes are Taxable Goods and Shipping. The Tax Rule is Retail Customer-Taxable Goods-Rate 1. If you sell anything other than taxable goods, or sell to anyone other than retail customers, you will need to create a new Tax Rule to cover that situation. Creating a Tax Rule The process for creating a Tax Rule is: Create the Customer Tax Classes that you need, or confirm that you have them. Create the Product Tax Classes that you need, or confirm that you have them. Create the Tax Rates that you need, or confirm that you have them and that they apply to the zones that you need. Create and name the Tax Rule: Assign Customer Tax Class, Product Tax Class, and Tax Rates to the Rule. Use the Priority to determine whether the Rule is added, or compounded, with other Rules. Determine the Sort Order of the Rule and save it. Each of these steps is covered in the subsections that follow. Time for action: Creating a Customer Tax Class From the Admin Panel, select Sales | Tax | Customer Tax Classes. The Customer Tax Classes page is displayed. If this is a new installation, only one Class is listed, Retail Customer as shown in the following screenshot: Click on Add New. A Customer Tax Class Information page is displayed. Enter a name for the Customer Tax Class. In our demo store, we are going to create Customer Tax Classes for Business and Nonprofit customers. Click on Save Class. Repeat these steps until all of the Customer Tax Classes that you need have been created. What just happened? A Tax Rule is composed of a Customer Class, Product Class, Tax Rate, and the location of the purchaser. You have just created the first part of that formula: the Customer Class. Time for action: Creating a Product Tax Class From the Admin Panel, select Sales | Tax | Product Tax Classes. The Product Tax Classes page is displayed. If this is a new installation, only two Classes are listed: Shipping and Taxable Goods. Click on Add New. The Product Tax Class Information page gets displayed: Enter a name for the Product Tax Class. In our demo store, we are going to create Product Tax Classes for Food and Nonfood products. We will apply the Food class to the coffee that we sell. We will apply the Nonfood class to the mugs, coffee presses, and other coffee accessories that we sell. Click on Save Class. Repeat these steps until all of the Product Tax Classes that you need have been created. What just happened? A Tax Rule is composed of a Customer Class, Product Class, Tax Rate, and the location of the purchaser. You have just created the second part of that formula: the Product Class. Creating Tax Rates In Magento, you can create Tax Rates one at a time. You can also import Tax Rates in bulk. Each method is covered in the next section. Time for action: Creating a Tax Rate in Magento From the Admin Panel, select Sales | Tax | Manage Tax Zones & Rates. The Manage Tax Rates page is displayed. If this is a new installation, only two Tax Rates are listed: US-CA-*-Rate 1 and US-NY-*-Rate 1. Click on Add New Tax Rate. The Add New Tax Rate page gets displayed: Tax Identifier is the name that you give this Tax Rate. You will see this name when you select this Tax Rate. The example that we saw is named US-CA-*-Rate 1. Notice how this name tells you the Country, State, and Zip/Post code for the Tax Rate. (The asterisk indicates that it applies to all zip codes in California.) It also tells which rate applies. Notice that the name doesn't give the actual percentage, which is 8.25%. Instead, it says Rate 1. This is because the percentage can change when California changes its tax rate. If you include the actual rate in the name, you would need to rename this Tax Rate when California changes the rate. Another way this rate could have been named is US-CA-All- Retail. Before creating new Tax Rates, you should develop a naming scheme that works for you and your business. Country, State, and Zip/Post Code determine the zone to which this Tax Rate applies. Magento calculates sales tax based upon the billing address, and not the shipping address. Country and State are drop-down lists. You must select from the options given to you. Zip/Post Code accepts both numbers and letters. You can enter an asterisk in this field and it will be a wild card. That is, the rate will apply to all zip/post codes in the selected country and state. You can enter a zip/post code without entering a country or state. If you do this, you should be sure that zip/post code is unique in the entire world. Suppose you have one tax rate for all zip codes in a country/state, such as 6% for United States/Pennsylvania. Also, suppose that you want to have a different tax rate for a few zip codes in that state. In this case, you would create separate tax rates for those few zip codes. The rates for the specific zip codes would override the rates for the wild card. So in a Tax Rate, a wild card means, "All zones unless this is overridden by a specific zone." In our demo store, we are going to create a Tax Rate for retail customers who live in the state of Pennsylvania, but not in the city of Philadelphia as shown: Click on Save Rate. You are taken back to the Manage Tax Rates page. The Tax Rate that you just added should be listed on the page. This procedure is useful for adding Tax Rates one at a time. However, if you need to add many Tax Rates at once, you will probably want to use the Import Tax Rates feature. This enables you to import a .csv, or a text-only file. You usually create the file in a spreadsheet such as OpenOffice Calc or Excel. The next section covers importing Tax Rates. What just happened? A Tax Rule is composed of a Customer Class, Product Class, Tax Rate, and the location of the purchaser. You have just created the third part of that formula: the Tax Rate. The Tax Rate included the location and the percentage of tax. You created the Tax Rate by manually entering the information into the system, which is suitable if you don't have too many Tax Rates to type. Time for action: Exporting and importing Tax Rates In my demo store, I have created a Tax Rate for the state of Pennsylvania. The Tax Rate for the city of Philadelphia is different. However, Magento doesn't enable me to choose a separate Tax Rate based on the city. So I must create a Tax Rate for each zip code in the city of Philadelphia. At this time there are 84 zip codes, and are shown here: 19019 19092 19093 19099 19101 19102 19103 19104 19105 19106 19107 19108 19109 19110 19111 19112 19113 19114 19115 19116 19118 19119 19120 19121 19122 19123 19124 19125 19126 19127 19128 19129 19130 19131 19132 19133 19134 19135 19136 19137 19138 19139 19140 19141 19142 19143 19144 19145 19146 19147 19148 19149 19150 19151 19152 19153 19154 19155 19160 19161 19162 19170 19171 19172 19173 19175 19177 19178 19179 19181 19182 19183 19184 19185 19187 19188 19191 19192 19193 19194 19196 19197 19244 19255

0
0
4857

How-To Tutorials - CMS & E-Commerce

Customizing the Document with Joomla! 1.5: Part 1

Event Delivery Network with Oracle SOA Suite 11g R1

Providing context using Custom Text in UPK 3.5

The Session and the User with Joomla! 1.5: Part 2

Using Web Pages in UPK 3.5

Glossary in UPK 3.5

The Session and the User with Joomla! 1.5: Part 1

Using JavaScript Effects with Joomla!

Adding Calendar to a Web Site using Drupal 6

Installation of FreeNAS

Trending Topics

Troubleshooting FreeNAS server

Installing Alfresco Software Development Kit (SDK)

Working with the Report Builder in Microsoft SQL Server 2008: Part 1

Managing Manufacturers, Vendors, and Product Categories with Joomla! E-Commerce VirtueMart

How to create a Tax Rule in Magento