module FieldtypeImageFromPage pick an image from various sources

[gebeer]

EDIT: all development and discussion of this module has been moved to Module FieldtypeImagePicker which now contains all features of this module and more. This module will not be maintained any further. The information below remains for pure historical reasons.

I am happy to present my new fieldtype FieldtypeImageFromPage. It is made up of 2 modules:

Fieldtype Image Reference From Another Page is a Fieldtype that stores a reference to a single image from another page. The image can be selected with the associated Inputfield.
Inputfield Select Image From Page is an Inputfield to select a single image from images on a predefined page and it's children.
And there also is a helper module that takes care of cleanup tasks.

This module evolved out of a discussion about my other Module FieldtypeImagePicker.  It caters for use cases where a set of images is being reused multiple times across a site. With this fieldtype these images can be administered through a chosen page. All images uploaded to that page will be available in the inputfield.

When to use ?

Let editors choose an image from a set of images that is being used site-wide. Ideal for images that are being re-used across the site.
Suited for images that are used on multiple pages throughout the site (e.g. icons).
Other than the native ProcessWire images field, the images here are not stored per page. Only references to images on another page are stored. This has several advantages:

• one central place to organize images
• when images change, you only have to update them in one place. All references will be updated, too. (Provided the name of the image that has changed stays the same)

Features

• Images can be manipulated like native ProcessWire images (resizing, cropping etc.)
• Image names are fully searchable through the API
• Accidental image deletion is prevented. When you want to delete an image from one of the pages that hold your site-wide images, the module searches all pages that use that image. If any page contains a reference to the image you are trying to delete, deletion will be prevented. You will get an error message to help you edit those pages and remove references there before you can finally delete the image.

How to install and setup

1. Download and install this module like any other modules in ProcessWire
2. Create a page in the page tree that will hold your images. This page's template must have an images field
3. Upload some images to the page you created in step 2
4. Create a new field. As type choose 'Image Reference From Another Page'. Save the field.
5. In 'Details' Tab of the field choose the page you created in step 2
6. Click Save button
7. Choose the images field name for the field that holds your images (on page template from step 2)
8. Click Save button again
9. Choose whether you want to include child pages of page from step 2 to supply images
10. Add the field to any template
11. You are now ready to use the field

View of the inputfield on the page edit screen:

View of the field settings

The module can be installed from this github repo. Some more info in the README there, too.

In my tests it was fairly stable. After receiving your valued feedback, I will eventually add it to the modules directory.

My ideas for further improvement:
- add ajax loading of thumbnails

Happy to hear your feedback!

 

Edited December 18, 2019 by gebeer
move features to other module

[szabesz]

Thanks for your work and sharing the module, much appreciated! I have just installed it, but stopped at this stage as my current use-case is: I would like to use it as a "page header" image picker. What I would like to do is this (at least theoretically):

• I want to add two image fields to the template of the Home page . One for "header image normal", and another one for "header image tall". So the home should be used for storing these site-wide images.
• 'Image Reference From Another Page' should be either added to the home template itself and to all of the templates of top level pages, so that the user can pick one image to be used as the header of that page.
• However, because I use Home as the source of images, I do not want the module to search for images under its child pages.

I guess the above outlined setup should be ok, but before spending time on trying it out, could you please confirm that it is a working setup or not?

[shogun]

This is exactly what I was looking for. Sorry for the dumb question....

1. How do I actually install this into processwire for it to recognize?
2. and what would be the exact name of the module?

[gebeer]

@szabesz ATM there is no option to choose whether child pages of the "image holder page" (home in your case) should be included or not. This would be a necessary option in your use case. Otherwise the inputfield would list all children of home as sources for images.
Couldn't you just use another page as source for the images and than create the 2 fields "header image normal" and "header image tall" as fields with my fieldtype and assign them to all top level pages' templates?
Anyways, sounds like an option to exclude child pages would be good. Think, I'm going to add this to the next release.

[szabesz]

1 minute ago, gebeer said:

Couldn't you just use another page as source for the images

Sure I could, however normally I use the template of the home for site-wide settings, which is a simple but working solution. The home page is rarely edited by my clients so in this sense it is a perfect fit for rarely edited site-wide settings or – in this use-case – as storage for such images.

3 minutes ago, gebeer said:

Anyways, sounds like an option to exclude child pages would be good. Think, I'm going to add this to the next release.

Thank you in advance! I'm going to wait for that, I'm not in a hurry.

[gebeer]

6 minutes ago, shogun said:

• How do I actually install this into processwire for it to recognize?
• and what would be the exact name of the module?

You can install this module from URL. Have a read here how to do this.

In the 'Add Module from URL section' of the Module install page, paste this URL that points to the zip download from my github repo: https://github.com/gebeer/FieldtypeImageFromPage/archive/master.zip

No need for the module name.

[shogun]

I got it working. It's cool. The only thing I noticed after installing, creating the default photo page, adding my photos and then creating the field and adding that field to a page.

The first time you arrive on a page that uses the new field, I got this error. It went away once I attached an image from the photos page, but I assume it would be more user friendly if there wasn't an error on the initial load before a

 

[shogun]

Also would be cool if it allowed you to choose multiple images from the page so you can create a gallery from the stored global images.

[gebeer]

6 minutes ago, shogun said:

The first time you arrive on a page that uses the new field, I got this error

Thanks for spotting this. Will be fixed for the next release soon.

4 minutes ago, shogun said:

Also would be cool if it allowed you to choose multiple images from the page so you can create a gallery from the stored global images.

This is not planned, as of yet, sorry. But if more people like to have that feature, I will eventually add it.

[gebeer]

1 hour ago, szabesz said:

Thank you in advance! I'm going to wait for that,

No need to wait any longer ? Option for including child pages is added and live on github in the new master v0.0.2 .

EDIT: It's the v0.0.3, getting late here

[gebeer]

23 minutes ago, shogun said:

The first time you arrive on a page that uses the new field, I got this error

That error is fixed on the latest release. To install it,  download a new module zip from github and replace all the files inside the module folder with files from the zip.

[szabesz]

22 minutes ago, gebeer said:

This is not planned, as of yet, sorry. But if more people like to have that feature, I will eventually add it.

Let's put the current state of the module to some "stress test" first for some time. After that, I happy to support "multiple images" request ?

20 minutes ago, gebeer said:

No need to wait any longer ? Option for including child pages is added and live on github in the new master v0.0.2 .

I'm gonna upgrade, thanks!

Edited December 8, 2019 by szabesz
typo

[gebeer]

1 minute ago, szabesz said:

I'm gonna upgrade, thanks!

Use the v0.0.3 version

[adrian]

Looks brilliant @gebeer

A couple of minor things:

1) The "Include child pages of above page as source for images?" checkbox doesn't show as checked when it is actually checked. Typically the way to handle this is with a ternary conditional to set the checked attribute to "checked" if the value is "1", eg: 

$f->attr('checked', $data['enabled'] == '1' ? 'checked' : '');

2) I didn't get an error message when deleting one of the source images. I actually wonder if you can hook into this and prevent deletion completely (unless the image is removed from being selected by this field.

[szabesz]

28 minutes ago, gebeer said:

Use the v0.0.3 version

Thanks, I have updated the module, and set up two image fields for the Home's template. Afterwards, I created an "Image Reference From Another Page" inputfield, however, in "Chose a page to get images from" any page is selectable except for Home. Any idea why is that so?

[gebeer]

New version v0.0.4 released https://github.com/gebeer/FieldtypeImageFromPage

12 hours ago, adrian said:

checkbox doesn't show as checked when it is actually checked

Is now fixed

12 hours ago, adrian said:

I didn't get an error message when deleting one of the source images. I actually wonder if you can hook into this and prevent deletion completely (unless the image is removed from being selected by this field

Implemented this. Also think it is better to prevent deletion of images as long as they still are referenced from other pages. In this case now a detailed error message is displayed which contains a list of pages that have references to the image, with edit links for those pages. Following the edit links (they open in new tab) shows only the relevant field to be edited on that page. Not sure this works in repeater contexts, though. Will have to test.

 

12 hours ago, szabesz said:

any page is selectable except for Home

Sorry for that, it was late last night. It is now fixed.

 

[adrian]

1 hour ago, gebeer said:

Implemented this. Also think it is better to prevent deletion of images as long as they still are referenced from other pages. In this case now a detailed error message is displayed which contains a list of pages that have references to the image, with edit links for those pages.

Works great - thank you! This is going to be such a useful module ?

[gebeer]

@adrian Yes, pretty useful ?

I tested this in repeater matrix context and it works, even the deletion prevention.
Only thing which is not so nice: when you have this field inside a repeater, the edit links to the pages that contain the image references are pointing to the repeater pages, not to the pages containing the repeater field. Do you think this could boggle editors? They normally never see the repeater pages in the system.

[adrian]

3 minutes ago, gebeer said:

Do you think this could boggle editors

Yeah, being out of context like this will be confusing I think. Could you try the getForPage() method to find the page that the repeater item is on and link to that instead?

[gebeer]

1 hour ago, adrian said:

Yeah, being out of context like this will be confusing I think. Could you try the getForPage() method to find the page that the repeater item is on and link to that instead?

Will do that. Also think it is better. Only have to find a way how to open the respective repeater field on that page and ideally scroll to it. There should be a built in way to do this. I remember having read sth about it but can't recall where it was.

[bernhard]

Hi @gebeer,

nice module, thx for sharing! Just tested it and everything worked flawlessly. 2 suggestions for improvements:

1. When no image is selected the gallery could be opened by default (I guess that is what one would like to do in that case: Choose an image)
2. Maybe there could be a link to the page that holds the images so if one wanted to upload a new image they could just click the link, upload the image and save the page. If your inputfield updated its content after that process it would even be better, but not necessary in the first step, I think.

[gmclelland]

7 hours ago, gebeer said:

I remember having read sth about it but can't recall where it was.

Maybe this? https://processwire.com/blog/posts/pw-3.0.145/  See the Inputfield Javascript API

[gebeer]

11 hours ago, bernhard said:

nice module, thx for sharing! Just tested it and everything worked flawlessly

Thanks for testing.

11 hours ago, bernhard said:

When no image is selected the gallery could be opened by default (I guess that is what one would like to do in that case: Choose an image)

I have this behavior in my other module that allows to pick images from a single folder. But now that there is an option to also choose images from child pages, it would make the inputfield grow too high. Also if there are many images. I will implement ajax loading for the thumbnails on open and think that is better, especially for cases with many images or child pages or when the field is used inside repeaters.

 

11 hours ago, bernhard said:

Maybe there could be a link to the page that holds the images

Good idea! Will add this. Maybe open in modal window and refresh thumbnails on close. Will be easy to implement once the ajax thumbnail loading is there.

9 hours ago, gmclelland said:

Maybe this? https://processwire.com/blog/posts/pw-3.0.145/  See the Inputfield Javascript API

Thanks for the link. That would be one option but only works for installs which are up to date on the PW version. Repeater fields also open automatically if they have an error attached to them. That is another option. But implementation is quite complex. Still experimenting with this feature.

[gebeer]

Updated to v0.0.5 on github

New features:

• optional Ajax loading of thumbnails. Especially useful when field is used inside repeaters or has many images.
• edit link right next to the thumbnails for the page that supplies the images. When clicked, the images field that holds the images will be loaded in a modal window. After making changes to the images and saving, the thumbnails are dynamically reloaded

Side note: while working on these, I discovered that you cannot assign custom attributes to InputfieldMarkup and InputfieldWrapper (both inherit from Inputfield class) with $field->attr('data-sth', 'value'). $field->setAttribute() also doesn't work. Anyone else also experienced this? Is it deliberate or a bug?

[bernhard]

30 minutes ago, gebeer said:

Side note: while working on these, I discovered that you cannot assign custom attributes to InputfieldMarkup and InputfieldWrapper (both inherit from Inputfield class) with $field->attr('data-sth', 'value'). $field->setAttribute() also doesn't work. Anyone else also experienced this? Is it deliberate or a bug?

Not sure, but is this what you are looking for? https://processwire.com/api/ref/inputfield/wrap-attr/