eTemplate-Referenz - Templates and Dialog-Editor for phpGroupware

by Ralf Becker RalfBecker@outdoor-training.de

A referenz documentation about the new eTemplates and the syntax and parameters of the several widgets.

Introduction - The concept of the eTemplates

As I already covered this in the Tutorial, I like would suggest to have a look there if your are not familiar with the overal concept.

There are two possibilities now to create an eTemplate:

1. Use the eTemplate-Editor (as descript in the Tutorial) to interactivly design your template.
2. Write a xml-file in a Syntax similar to XUL (the mozilla UI-interface definition language) and import it into the database with the eTemplate-Editor

The xml-interface to the eTemplates

The eTemplates-Editor can import and export now eTemplates as xml-files. Here is short example showing an eTemplate from the example app in the Tutorial (here are screenshots of the template in the editor and the show-function):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<overlay>
  <grid id="et_media.edit" template="" lang="" group="" version="" width="100%">
    <columns>
      <column/>
      <column/>
      <column/>
      <column/>
    </columns>
    <rows>
      <row>
        <description size="ib" span="all" value="eTemplates MediaDB" no_lang="1" id="msg"/>
      </row>
      <row>
        <hrule span="all"/>
      </row>
      <row>
        <description span="all"/>
      </row>
      <row>
        <description value="Name"/>
        <textbox size="100" maxlength="100" span="all" id="name" statustext="here goes the name of the publication / record"/>
      </row>
      <row>
        <description value="Author"/>
        <textbox size="100" maxlength="100" span="all" id="author" statustext="please use Name, First Name"/>
      </row>
      <row>
        <description value="Type"/>
        <menulist>
          <menupopup span="all" id="type" statustext="select the type fitting most"/>
        </menulist>
      </row>
      <row>
        <description value="Description"/>
        <textbox ="" cols="3" rows="100" span="all" id="descr" statustext="we have a fulltext search using that description"/>
      </row>
      <row>
        <description span="all"/>
      </row>
      <row>
        <button label="Read" id="read" statustext="reads or searches for entries matching the criteria above"/>
        <button label="Save" id="save" statustext="saves the change to the db"/>
        <button label="Cancel" id="cancel" statustext="clears the form, without changing anything"/>
        <button label="Delete" id="delete" statustext="deletes an entry"/>
      </row>
    </rows>
  </grid>
</overlay>

The tags / widget-names and attributes / parameters used are as close as possible to XUL. For more information about XUL refer to www.xulplanet.com or the Mozilla docs www.mozilla.org/xpfe/xulref/.

Please keep in mind that the xml-files used to store the eTemplates are only similar to XUL and implement only a subset of XUL. Here are the main differences:

• only certain widgets and widget attributes are implemented
• xul-files can contain the actual content or refer to it via a datasources (RDF's) and use a different template syntax to fill in content from a variable: <label value="?label"/>
  eTemplates get there content from an array passed to the exec or show-function of the template-object and referenz to the content by the id / name-field of each widget.
• xul-files can contain an unlimited number of nested elements, where as the eTemplates xml-root-node has to be a xul-grid and can not contain other grids or boxes as element. This limitation might be removed in the near future, for now you have to use the non-xul-element <template id="app.template_name"/> us load an other template by its name.

Like XUL the eTemplate-xml-files are quite strict with the xml-syntax:

• All tags and attributes must be written in lowercase
• All strings must be double quoted, like id="string"
• Every XUL widget must use close tags (either <tag></tag> or <tag/>) to be well-formed
• All attributes must have a value, no <tag attr> it has to be <tag attr="">

Syntax and Parameter Referenz

Standard parametes / attributes for all widgets

please contact me if you have further questions or comments about the eTemplates