Best way to do a fixed count, repeated group of fields?

[cst989]

Hi, I'm using a repeater in the following manner:

I have set the minimum items to 5, and the maximum number of items to 5. I basically just want to loop through a few fields five times.

But I feel like I'm really forcing the repeater to do something it's not really meant for by doing this. A table would look and feel better, but as far as I know can't be fixed to x rows/pre-populated.

 

Also there's a technical problem with this. Repeater rows do not seem to save unless you change something. So if I make a new page with the fields above and hit save, no data is actually available for the field. In my screenshot you can see that items #1 and #5 have saved because the type has been changed to 2 - they're solid and don't say "New" anymore. Also item #4 has saved because the type was changed and changed back. But #2 and #3 won't ever save unless you change the value.

If there's not a better suggestion for the approach in general - I would appreciate any technical support in forcing each row to save!

[zoeck]

Do you know the "Combo" ProField?
https://processwire.com/store/pro-fields/combo/

I'm not sure, but I think this might be just the right thing for you ? 

[cst989]

You know what, I have a long expired subscription for ProFields and I have been weighing up whether or not I need to renew ? I will take a look, thanks

[Robin S]

12 hours ago, cst989 said:

A table would look and feel better, but as far as I know can't be fixed to x rows/pre-populated.

The Limit Table module (previously not in the modules directory but I just added it) adds this feature to Profields Table.

[cst989]

That looks great! If "show all rows" is selected, and you open and save a fresh page with that field, does it actually save rows for you to iterate through? Per my issue at the end of my first post -- it caused me some issues with repeater

[Robin S]

7 hours ago, cst989 said:

If "show all rows" is selected, and you open and save a fresh page with that field, does it actually save rows for you to iterate through?

I believe so, but the simplest thing would be to try it and see.

[cst989]

I didn't get as far as checking if a table field would save the rows when they were new, because unfortunately table doesn't offer as many options that I needed, like a default option on selector, or the ability to show/hide fields 

I ended up sticking with the repeater matrix but forcing the repeater to publish on save. I tried the following, it worked at first but then it started creating database errors....

$this->addHookAfter("Pages::saveReady", function (HookEvent $event) {
    $page = $event->arguments("page");
    if(!($page->hasField("featured_articles"))) return;
    foreach($page->featured_articles as $item) {
        $item->of(false);
        $item->status("published");
        $item->save();
    }
});

now I think I'm just going to create 5 separate fields of "fieldset (page)" type ?