History: Magic

Magic is the code name for the new data-driven admin panel in TikiWiki 3.0

You can access at tiki-magic.php with 3.0

Who

• Christine Davis (lead)
• Louis-Philippe Huberdeau
• Marc Laporte
• You?

Advantages over previous system

The old tiki-admin.php was hard coded settings. Tiki-magic.php has several advantages

• Easy to have settings in more than one place

sylvie: can you do it without duplicating the line?))

• No more multiple "save" buttons per page
• Can have a view of all settings

sylvie: how?

• More future-proof

Documentation

features.csv

Explanation for the "type" column

PureContainers

Container

- Holds other a collection of anything.

ConfigurationGroup

- Holds a collection of settings only. (where are defined the collection????)

Functions

Feature

- Is a piece of functionality which can be enabled and disabled, and may have configuration.

System

- Is a piece of core functionality of tikiwiki that may not be disabled, and may have configuration.

Functionality

- Is a reference to a template which performs a function, and has no configuration. It is part of either a feature or system item. It is used for determining what should be highlighted in the top bar for that template.

Settings

Flag

- A true/false flag.

Simple

- A simple text value.

ByRef

- A simple text value which is stored by-reference.

Int

- A smaller numeric field for storing a value.

EverythingElse

- An item which has a special-case input handler.

How about a "required"... for things like sender email that are empty on a new install but admins must/should complete? (ricks99)

Explanation for the "template" column

sylvie: Is it the php file or the tpl? (tiki-phpinfo seems to show that it the php.. so perhaps the name in not well chosen

Explanation for the "ordinal" column

sylvie: ????? What means a negative value???

Explanation for the "depends_on" column

sylvie: the feature_id the feature(seems only needed for feature?????) is depending on. Can we put a list????

To do

• document the features.csv file
• copy/paste all the labels from tiki-admin.php?page=features to db/features.csv as can be reviewed at tiki-magic.php?featurechain=1 or tiki-feature-load-postprocessor.php
• Move all the settings to the best place(s)
• Check all settings

Bugs/missing stuff

• available_languages is a multi-select to restrict, not a drop-down
• tiki-admin.php?page=cms Batch upload (CSV file) needs to be moved elsewhere
• Release checks are made when you browse admin main page only
• Force immediate check
• tiki-admin.php?page=intertiki -> maybe this should stay the same

Feature requests

• Have a third level of magic menu
• Have a way to show/hide the new horizontal menu (maybe something which drags from left to right)
• Retroaction message to confirm what was just changed and add to the syslog (user x changed feature y)
• To work with lesser permissions (ex.: tiki_p_admin_wiki)
• AJAXy search box to quickly find my feature
• Two modes for inactive features (greyed out vs hidden)

• Need a way to hide children if the parent is disabled. For example, if I have disabled Wiki Comments, don't bother showing me its children: Comments default ordering, list displayed by default, number f comments per page.
  • ricks99

• I'd like to propose a slight change to the way the options are formatted. IMHO, having the labels right-aligned is tough to read. I propose (more from ricks99):
  
  

  Type	Format
  Flag	Have the checkbox to the left of the label.
  Simple	Have the label above the text field, with the field 100% width.
  Int	Have the label to the left of the text field (size=3)
  Text Area	Have the label above the text area, with the field 100% width.
  Enumeration	Have the label to the left of the selector.

  Unable to load the jQuery Sortable Tables feature.

Nice to have

Need to think about it more

• Reset to default feature (nyloth's idea)

Announcement on the mailing list