Module Batch Child Editor

[adrian]

Thanks for the report @NorbertH!

There were a couple of updates this morning:

1. fixing some issues with some page specific settings not overriding the main config settings
2. added support for subfields in the field pairings - verified to work for Profields Textareas and MapMarker fields, but I think should work for most others as well - let me know if you find any that don't work.

A question for all you multi-language folks out there - does anyone ever rename the name of the title field? I am sure you often change the label, but the name is what I am concerned about. There are a few places in the module that check for "title" but I am thinking that if this is not always its name, then I might need to check for it by:

type = "FieldtypePageTitle"

Trouble is that it is possible to have more than one FieldtypePageTitle field on a site which seems a little weird - does anyone know a use case for that?

Any thoughts on this?

[mr-fan]

$page->name

$page->id

and.....$page->title.....is international

I think "title" should not renamed for good practise reasons...so may a hint on the BCE documentation should be enough "If you rename the title field....it don't work".

But i'm not a pro so may more opinions are more helpfull.

Regards mr-fan

[adrian]

Ok, all new features have now been merged to the master branch. I have changed the release state from Stable to Beta for this release. Really just as a precaution for the Update mode options until I have had more feedback on this.

Please let me know how this new version works out for everyone. It will probably take you a while to go through all the new configuration options, but I think it's worth the effort. You can use this module as a simple replacement for the Children/Subpages section of the Children tab (which allows for much quicker editing of child pages), all the way through to a fully customizable CSV import tool for site site editors to create and update pages.

Feel free to send through any other ideas along with any issues you come across.

[mr-fan]

Thank you adrian for your great work on this module.

It's a full blown batch child editor suite for flexible CSV Imports - in as a minimum reward for your work i did the complete german translation, to get more users involved on this module and it's advantages.

Kind regards mr-fan

1. did a PR on some strings that lost via c&p the settingsstrings at the end of the module

https://github.com/adrianbj/BatchChildEditor/pull/3

2. only one problem with two strings that i can't figure out since i see no difference between the working one and the two others...screenshot added

3. languagfile as zip attached

deutsch-batcheditor.zip

[adrian]

Thanks for the kind words and for your efforts on this translation - must have been quite a task - there's lots to translate in this module

I accepted your PR and also fixed (I think) the issue you were having translating that the enabled templates setting description. Please let me know if it works now.

[Manfred62]

I accepted your PR and also fixed (I think) the issue you were having translating that the enabled templates setting description. Please let me know if it works now.

just tested this. I can reproduce the non-translated text. It's because you use double-quotes instead of single quotes? Example: line 1005, 1021

Please search for \nNB inside the file. Normally you only need \n for a new line. Or has this (NB) a special meaning? Next problem: with single quotes only \n didn't work.

[adrian]

Thanks @Manfre62 for testing.

I don't think the double quotes is the issue because in @mr-fan's screenshot he has translated the "Configurable Pages" option and the description for it also uses double quotes. I don't use translated modules though, so could you please double check and confirm that it is the double-quotes.

It's always been my experience that you can't use \n inside single quotes, which is why I use them in situations where I want to break things across more than one line.

"NB" is a common acronym in English for Nota bene which is latin for "Note well".

[Manfred62]

tried it again. When using single qoutes, text is translated. But new line doesn't work. There are 3 sections (screenshot):

BTW: didn't know/used NB Thanks for info

[adrian]

Thanks for testing. I'd probably be OK without the line breaks in those spots in your screenshot, but what about this line for example: 

https://github.com/adrianbj/BatchChildEditor/blob/master/BatchChildEditor.module#L1198 - this definitely needs the line breaks.

It seems like this should work. Could you please confirm?

$fieldEnabledTemplates->description = __('The batch editing option will only be available for the selected templates.'."\n".'NB Leave blank to allow all templates.', __FILE__);

I probably should switch them all over to: $this->_() for the speed advantage since they are all inside a class, but that can wait for now.

[Manfred62]

It seems like this should work. Could you please confirm?

$fieldEnabledTemplates->description = __('The batch editing option will only be available for the selected templates.'."\n".'NB Leave blank to allow all templates.', __FILE__);

the concatenation doesn't work.

[adrian]

OK, I think they need to be treated as separate translatable strings, like this:

$fieldEnabledTemplates->description = __('The batch editing option will only be available for the selected templates . '. "\n" . __('NB Leave blank to allow all templates.', __FILE__);

Or using $this->_() it would look like:

$fieldEnabledTemplates->description = $this->_('The batch editing option will only be available for the selected templates . '. "\n" . $this->_('NB Leave blank to allow all templates.', __FILE__);

Seems a shame to have multiple strings to translate though just because there is a line break, but as far as I can tell there is no other way. Or maybe it actually makes more sense so the translator can't accidentally remove the line break?

[adrian]

Another major new feature!

I have added an Export to CSV mode which generates a CSV file containing the fields for all child pages.

It currently supports most field types, including:

• Text/Textarea/Integer/Date fields
• Page fields - exports the "Title" if available, or "Name" if not (eg user template), rather than just the page ID
• File/Images - exports the filenames
• Profields Textareas - automatically converts field into multiple columns - one for each subfield
• Profields Multiplier - separates values with a customizable separator - you can choose a line break if you want which is nice when opening the CSV in Excel. This same customizable separator is available for other multiple fields like Page fields, File/Image etc

It does not support Profields Table, PageTable or Repeaters as these would get very messy. Note if you want to provide an export for specific Table fields, don't forget to check out: Table CSV Import/Export 

Fields to be exported can be predefined or customized by the user.

Also includes an API export method:

//export as CSV if csv_export=1 is in url
if($input->get->csv_export==1){
   $modules->get('ProcessChildrenCsvExport'); //load helper module

   //delimiter, enclosure, file extension, names in first row, multiple field separator, array of field names
   $page->exportCsv(',', '"', 'csv', true, "\r", array('title','images','textarea_test'));
   //$page->exportCsv() - this version uses the defaults from the module or page specific settings
}
// display content of template with link to same page with appended csv_export=1
else{
   include("./head.inc");
   echo "<a href='./?csv_export=1'>Export Table as CSV</a>"; //link to initiate export
   include("./foot.inc");
}

Like the rest of this module, everything is configurable at various levels, so you can include this functionality as a separate tab, or part of the Children tab. You can predefine all settings so the user only has a simple Export button - whatever works best for you.

Please let me know how this new functionality works out for you and if you have any suggestions for improvements.

[adrian]

Sorry for all the quick updates, but am using this to populate a huge site and finding new needs so implementing as I go.

You can now change the template of each child page in the Edit mode. Because this change happens without warnings, it is controlled by the new "Allow template changes" setting in the module config. Of course the ability to change templates is also additionally controlled by the user's "page-template" permission.

Note - you might potentially only want to enable "Allow template changes" while your site is in development and disable once it is live to avoid any disasters.

TIP: If you want to change the template for all child pages at once and there are lots of pages, this could still be a little tedious. So instead, use the "Replace" mode, choose the "Child Template" at the top and click Save. This will delete and recreate all child pages with the selected template. This is super fast if the pages don't have any content yet (or child pages of their own), which can often be the case early in development when you are still figuring out which pages will have which templates!

[SiNNuT]

This is becoming more and more impressive and useful with each update! Great stuff. On of my most used modules.

[adrian]

Thanks SiNNuT - I really appreciate you letting me know that you're finding it so useful.!

I hope you'll also like the next little enhancement

Edit mode now has hidden and unpublished checkboxes:

[mr-fan]

This is getting really really great tool for editing, import and now export, too....tell me when you "run slower" forward...that i could translate the missing things to german as well.

Best regards mr-fan

[Robin S]

Great module!

Exporting to CSV works well for small to medium numbers of child pages, but is failing silently for large numbers of child pages. In my case, around 3000 children, with 20 fields per page. I'm probably asking a bit much to try and export such a large volume of data. Maybe large exports like this could be done in batches somehow?

[mr-fan]

More informations about errors, php environment...(memory, execution time....) ?

No problems here with "big data" tested with 3000+ and about 15 fields per page.

regards mr-fan

[Robin S]

More informations about errors, php environment...(memory, execution time....) ?

After clicking the "Export as CSV" button the browser "loads" for about four seconds then stops loading.

No errors displayed in browser, no errors in ProcessWire error log, and no error logs in the module folder.

Basic shared hosting, PHP 5.4, memory_limit: 64M, max_execution_time: 30.

Exporting the same data via Ryan's CSV export addon for Lister Pro works fine (which solves my CSV export needs).

[adrian]

Cerulean - sorry for the delay, I was on vacation. Like mr-fan, I haven't had issues either with this, but I do have my memory settings quite high. I should probably add some batch functionality to the exporting like the ListerPro action uses. I'll add it to my list of things to do, hopefully fairly shortly.

[LostKobrakai]

I would be nice if the "Edit Children Editor" would honor template family settings.

[adrian]

I would be nice if the "Edit Children Editor" would honor template family settings.

Sorry I thought it was already doing this correctly, but I just checked and noticed that setting "Can this template be used for new pages?" to "No" doesn't remove the "Add New" button - is that the issue you are referring to? 

I am using addable() on the parent page for determining if the Add New button should be displayed, but I see that this has an override for superusers. It also doesn't consider the noParents setting - you need the createable() method for that. 

Is this the issue you are having? Are you testing as superuser? Is the behavior correct as normal user?

I am in a rush out the door, so will look at this further when I am back, but I might need to use a different approach for checking this.

[LostKobrakai]

It's not exactly what I was taking about. I used the Child editor to edit some existing pages and add a few new ones. The parent page to those would only allow for a single template for children, but the template select boxes did show me all templates.

[adrian]

It's not exactly what I was taking about. I used the Child editor to edit some existing pages and add a few new ones. The parent page to those would only allow for a single template for children, but the template select boxes did show me all templates.

Sorry - I can't seem to duplicate this at all here - for me there is only the one template option listed. Is there any way you can narrow things down to a certain configuration? Perhaps access to a test install that is showing the issue?

Thanks for helping to figure this out.

[adrian]

@LostKobrakai - I just pushed a new version that adds a lot of new allowed template checking logic - can you please see if this fixes the issues you were having?