Fellow Bricoleurs,
I have a client who uses Bricolage to manage photo galleries. They're
tired of the old pattern of adding image subelements one-at-a-time in
a story profile. What they really want to be able to do is upload all
of the photos at once and have all the necessary subelements created
for them.
So I've started thinking about how I might implement this without
fundamentally changing how Bricolage works. I have a few thoughts, but
I'm quite unsure about them; please do reply with your ideas, too.
First, there is the issue of uploading more than one file at a time.
Right now, you can only upload one file at a time, because then you
need to edit the resulting Media document. Even if you upload a file
as part of a subelement, you have to edit the Media document (or at
least save it) before you get back to the story. Allowing the upload
of multiple files at once (or of an archive of files) would change
this: A whole bunch of media files would have to be created at once.
If the user wanted to change anything about them, they'd then have to
edit each one.
But I think we can mostly work around this kind of thing by adding a
new Bulk Create page (better names sought). It would basically look
just like the current Create Media page, only it'd allow multiple
files and/or archives to be uploaded. We could use [DOM tricks][] to
make it easy to add a bunch of files at once, and put checkboxes next
to those that look like archives (ending in .zip, .gz, or .bz2). Then,
when the form is submitted, the user is returned to her workspace,
with all of the new media documents there. We could even have a "Check
into" select list so that all the created media could just be checked
into a desk when the form is submitted, so it's all done in one fell
swoop.
[DOM tricks]: http://the-stickman.com/web-development/javascript/upload-multiple-files-with-a-single-file-element/
I think that this is a decent idea for an interface; a trickier
interface is allowing something like this for a gallery-type document.
So I think that the key here is some sort of generalized interface for
adding multiple subelements at once. Perhaps there is a second select
list that has a list of elements that one can add multiples of. When
you select one from this, list, you enter the number of elements you
want, and it adds them. If the subelement supports related media,
you'd be given the option to upload one or more files and the number
of subelements would correspond to the number of files you uploaded
(which would be created via the multiple media document upload
thingy). Then the editor could add the appropriate captions and whatnot.
So I'm not sure how I'd make that look, in terms of providing the
option for adding multiple elements at once. Suggestions?
And what do you think of the idea overall? Would you use this? Do you
have other ideas for how this sort of thing might work? Let me know!
Thanks,
David
I have a client who uses Bricolage to manage photo galleries. They're
tired of the old pattern of adding image subelements one-at-a-time in
a story profile. What they really want to be able to do is upload all
of the photos at once and have all the necessary subelements created
for them.
So I've started thinking about how I might implement this without
fundamentally changing how Bricolage works. I have a few thoughts, but
I'm quite unsure about them; please do reply with your ideas, too.
First, there is the issue of uploading more than one file at a time.
Right now, you can only upload one file at a time, because then you
need to edit the resulting Media document. Even if you upload a file
as part of a subelement, you have to edit the Media document (or at
least save it) before you get back to the story. Allowing the upload
of multiple files at once (or of an archive of files) would change
this: A whole bunch of media files would have to be created at once.
If the user wanted to change anything about them, they'd then have to
edit each one.
But I think we can mostly work around this kind of thing by adding a
new Bulk Create page (better names sought). It would basically look
just like the current Create Media page, only it'd allow multiple
files and/or archives to be uploaded. We could use [DOM tricks][] to
make it easy to add a bunch of files at once, and put checkboxes next
to those that look like archives (ending in .zip, .gz, or .bz2). Then,
when the form is submitted, the user is returned to her workspace,
with all of the new media documents there. We could even have a "Check
into" select list so that all the created media could just be checked
into a desk when the form is submitted, so it's all done in one fell
swoop.
[DOM tricks]: http://the-stickman.com/web-development/javascript/upload-multiple-files-with-a-single-file-element/
I think that this is a decent idea for an interface; a trickier
interface is allowing something like this for a gallery-type document.
So I think that the key here is some sort of generalized interface for
adding multiple subelements at once. Perhaps there is a second select
list that has a list of elements that one can add multiples of. When
you select one from this, list, you enter the number of elements you
want, and it adds them. If the subelement supports related media,
you'd be given the option to upload one or more files and the number
of subelements would correspond to the number of files you uploaded
(which would be created via the multiple media document upload
thingy). Then the editor could add the appropriate captions and whatnot.
So I'm not sure how I'd make that look, in terms of providing the
option for adding multiple elements at once. Suggestions?
And what do you think of the idea overall? Would you use this? Do you
have other ideas for how this sort of thing might work? Let me know!
Thanks,
David
