ECI: Lists
Lists is a type of project. You will find the project panel on the Start page. It offers the ability to display tables or lists by merging multiple records into a single post. It is a very new system added 29th July 2011. There are endless ideas for improvement and improvement will come. It was added on hire, meaning right now it is being designed for a specific user paying for the changes. If it does not suit your needs please comment below so I can keep track of users needs on this feature.
Changes
16th August 2011: I have decided not to include any type of comparison ability. This will come in another plugin later once I have made more improvements to the core of my import plugins.
17th August 2011: improved the ability to style lists. New form inputs were added to the Designs page for using div, ul and ol. I have also added basic styling ability, something that can be greatly improved on later.
Video Tutorial
Key Information
- Currently you can only use a single design with these projects, the list is built using the Default project design, this can be improved if required
- 200 item limit per list at this time, this can be changed and is simply due to an SQL query limit. Contact me if you need it customised to suit your needs.
- Only 10 distinct value groups are stored at any time, more are generated on the fly
- The first record with a group of records is used for the overall template, the other records details used where required in the list
- Project Database Table: all records used to build a list will share the same post ID. The ecipostid column will hold the same value for multiple records, unlike a standard project where each record will have its own post ID.
- Special Tokens: you must use the same tokens for the columns selected as key columns on the conditions panel in your post title design. This is the only way to apply the values to your post title that apply to all the records being listed in the posts content. See the WebTechGlobal Forum for examples.
Possible Upgrades
- All Images To A Single Field: I thought about taking all the images from every merged record and adding them to a single custom field. I could provide a shortcode to display them in a gallery. Ideally it would be great to use an Ajax slider in place of where your featured image is. Possibly an argument in your theme that displays a single image by default and a slider when the custom field is available. Please comment below if you are interested in such a feature.
Features
The features as of 17th August 2011 are still considered basic when considering the length I could go to with this feature. Changes are however I will release a new plugin to offer listing ability with a far better core than ECI.
Shortcode
Simply selecting and creating a List project from the Start page will not add any sort of list to the content of your posts. It will however add lists, html and content, to a posts custom fields. So if you check the custom fields for your posts, you should see one holding some html and content created using your data. To make use of that custom field value, you must use the [ecilist] shortcode somewhere in your design. This gives us the ability to place it anywhere we need to i.e. below or above other content in your template design.
Item Design
I came up with this approach quickly because it will suit most users, however it may not suit everyone. Contact me if you want more control over the building and styling of your lists. Basically this text area allows you to paste html, including tokens, to create a sort of sub-template that will be used to create each list item. You must paste tokens in the text area for your data to be used. If your Container HTML is div, your Item Design could be very flexible especially if your handy with CSS.
The Item Design allows us to add any html and any tokens for any type of data. We can display images or links per item. With enough styling we can create very impressive lists, even with jQuery UI or maybe you’ll be happy applying a Lightbox effect. Let me be clear that ECI does not offer jQuery UI ability, you can achieve it using other plugins or adding scripts to your theme.
Container HTML
First I would like to explain that a container is the type of html used to create the list. This menu allows us to select an unordered list, ordered list or a div. You must always select this at this time, that is why the Item Design text area should not contain the html for lists or div unless you do want div’s nested inside an existing 2 layers. If you select div, a div wrapper is used where ul or ol would be placed in the html. A div will also be created per item, so that is two layers. You will need to use styling and div positioning if you add more to your Item Design.
CSS and Script
This is not a recommended feature but if your sure you will never want to change the styling of your list and your not bothered about a slight deviation from web standards then it could be handy. Anything you save in this text area will be added to the html of your post, specifically at the beginning of your list code. The main use is to add inline CSS but we can also add JavaScript or other html.