A "Simple CCK" system is proposed here to extend the article data model with the help of custom fields and the necessary functions to filter the contents according to any criteria and to display them in a specific sorting order.
This specification aims to enable users to create simple projects with on-board tools.
Currently, if one wants to use custom fields with Filtering and Ordering, a CCK extension must be installed. This prevents the majority of Joomla's own features (such as Tags, Custom Fields, Categories, Multi-Language, Associations, Workflow, etc.) as well as the majority of other third party extensions from being used without restriction.
Adding Filtering and Ordering options based on the Custom Fields makes it possible to create a website with simple custom content types that offers all the possibilities of Joomla without the hassle of a full-fledged CCK.
For example, consider a list of activities to do on weekends, with fields like "date", "free or paid", "city". We need to be able to filter by activities in a specific city and to sort them by price or by date.
While Custom Fields and Workflow already give the CMS a considerable degree of flexibility, they still lack basic functionality. The aim of this proposal is to complete the range of functions so that it meets current expectations and thus enable users to create simple projects with on-board tools. The built-in functionality should also enable extension developers to streamline their solutions and achieve better integration with horizontal features such as Tagging and Versioning.
It is not a goal of this proposal to make existing extensions obsolete.
Already in the days of the Idea Portal, the desire for a Content Construction Kit (CCK) was high on the wish list. The feature request continues to pop up frequently.
In Joomla 3.1, a first attempt towards universal content was made with the Unified Content Model (UCM), but this was never really pursued. Most Joomla developers do not know how to use this concept properly - or simply ignore it.
Joomla 3.7 brought Custom Fields for articles and users, an integration of the DPFields extension into the CMS. As useful as this new functionality is, it is extremely limited because there is no way to filter or sort by the value of the Custom Fields.
In Joomla 3.9 (PR#20890), custom admin menus with a lot of ** Filtering** options were added, which is another major step towards a simple CCK supporting (kind of) different content types.
- UCM is not well accepted; even the core developers are hardly familiar with the concept. Some if not most features are not supported by UCM.
com_contentis a first class citizen in the core, so all core features are available to its content.
- Features like Filtering and Ordering are easy to implement because of the dedicated database table.
- Core features must be supported explicitly to make them available to the content of the type specific model.
The implementation of Custom Fields lacks support for Filtering and Ordering. This approach complements ** Custom Fields** with the missing functions.
com_contentis a first class citizen in the core, so all core features are available to its content.- A specific set of Custom Fields can be considered a content type and displayed accordingly in the UI.
It quickly becomes apparent that the content must be managed by com_content so that the various content types can
benefit from the further development of the CMS. The approaches 4.1.1 and 4.1.3 are therefore immediately omitted from
further consideration. The approaches 4.1.2 and 4.2 on the other hand are not mutually exclusive; the Custom Fields
complement com_content perfectly.
Custom Fields (com_fields) are supplemented by the features
- Filtering and
- Ordering.
Custom Fields can optionally be grouped into categories; the name of the category serves as the content type.
- Suki Nozick sukinoz@gmail.com
- Niels Braczek nbraczek@bsds.de
- Cyril Thibout cyril@pulsar-agency.com
| Voter | Vote |
|---|---|
| Benjamin Trenkle | 0 |
| Christiane Maier-Stadtherr / Viviana Menzel | +1 |
| Crystal Dionysopoulos | +1 |
| David Jardin | |
| Franciska Perisa | +1 |
| Hannes Papenberg | -1 |
| Harald Leithner | +1 |
| Jacob Waisner | 0 |
| Llewellyn van der Merve | +1 |
| Mike Brandner | +1 |
| Niels Braczek | +1 |
| Olivier Buisard | +1 |
| Philip Walton | +1 |
| Robert Deutz | -1 |
| Roland Dalmulder | +1 |
| Shirielle Williams | |
| Shivam Raiput | +1 |
| Sigrid Gramlinger | +1 |
| Tobias Zulauf | -1 |
| Result: PASSED | |
| in favor | 12 |
| against | 3 |
| abstentions | 2 |
| no vote | 2 |
(not yet taken)
Note: Order descending chronologically.
- Custom Admin Menus PR#20890
- Discussion: Sort articles by custom field
- Feature request: filter and sort articles by custom field
...