Before I create this as a feature request, I thought I would get some opinions here first.
The author field on a blog post is currently a textstring. Wouldn't this be better as a dropdown of the authors created in the Authors node?
This could be done with a nuPicker XmlDropDownPicker. I am not an xPath expert, so I don't know if you can specify a relative node but I have used //ArticulateAuthor when testing this idea. If there was more than one Articulate blog in an installation this would return authors for all of them.
The code would also have to be changed in PostModel.cs as the nuPicker returns its own object.
Any thoughts on this or any ideas of a better way?
I'm not sure its a better way but how about a hybrid approach, that is a text box with an autocomplete with the autocomplete listing authors from the Authors node.
This would give editors a better chance of getting match to an defined author while allowing them to specify an author which doesn't have a profile defined.
At the end of the day I would like to see a stronger connection between blog posts and authors.
Authors are wired up by name. The reason for this currently is because an author can be a real Umbraco user or just an author profile. By all means though, if you wish to help creaet an author picker that'd be fantastic! As it stands now though, i don't currently have time to do this. If you want to log a feature request on GitHub that will be a good start so it doesn't get forgotten.
In that case, then I think Chris's idea of a autocomplete picker is best, I will create a feature request for this.
So it should list out author nodes and/or users (in a specified group?) and would also allow a name to be saved which is not in either list. The data should be stored as text as it is now.
I haven't created a custom datatype before and I also have some urgent work coming up, but if I have time I will give this a go.
Blog post select author
Before I create this as a feature request, I thought I would get some opinions here first.
The author field on a blog post is currently a textstring. Wouldn't this be better as a dropdown of the authors created in the Authors node?
This could be done with a nuPicker XmlDropDownPicker. I am not an xPath expert, so I don't know if you can specify a relative node but I have used //ArticulateAuthor when testing this idea. If there was more than one Articulate blog in an installation this would return authors for all of them.
The code would also have to be changed in PostModel.cs as the nuPicker returns its own object.
Any thoughts on this or any ideas of a better way?
I'm not sure its a better way but how about a hybrid approach, that is a text box with an autocomplete with the autocomplete listing authors from the Authors node.
This would give editors a better chance of getting match to an defined author while allowing them to specify an author which doesn't have a profile defined.
At the end of the day I would like to see a stronger connection between blog posts and authors.
Authors are wired up by name. The reason for this currently is because an author can be a real Umbraco user or just an author profile. By all means though, if you wish to help creaet an author picker that'd be fantastic! As it stands now though, i don't currently have time to do this. If you want to log a feature request on GitHub that will be a good start so it doesn't get forgotten.
In that case, then I think Chris's idea of a autocomplete picker is best, I will create a feature request for this.
So it should list out author nodes and/or users (in a specified group?) and would also allow a name to be saved which is not in either list. The data should be stored as text as it is now.
I haven't created a custom datatype before and I also have some urgent work coming up, but if I have time I will give this a go.
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