Work on this blogging tool

With Stew:

Created:

/blogs/inc/CONTROL/hcmc_stats/reports.php

Figured out how to hook into the main db functionality by including the relevant libraries in reports.php. Worked out how to extract parameters from the URL using the B2Evo param() function. Began building the SQL string we'll need to pass to the database to get back a list of posts. Found a number of difficulties; posts are not directly in blogs, they're associated with categories (through two different tables), and categories are associated with blogs. Got some way into it; more tomorrow.

I hacked together a style derived from the main (new) HCMC website.
Please try it and comment. I've only tested in Firefox on Linux so far.

Modified the AJAX code from the Moses project to call the back-end PHP script and put the response into the page. (PHP script itself doesn't do anything yet, other than respond...)

Added the HTML code to:

/blogs/inc/CONTROL/hcmc_stats/hcmc_stats.php

Added CSS code to:

/blogs/rsc/css/admin.global.css

JS code which displays and updates the progress bar is part of the AJAX code which will be imported next.

Contrary to the previous post, I decided that the best way to submit a report query to the back-end is to build a URL search string; this will enable us to provide URLs directly to reports. The SQL query should be constructed by the back-end code based on the field values submitted (through GET). This is also consistent with our AJAX code in the Moses and ScanCan projects.

Created a JS file to do this (hcmc_reports.js). This will later include all the AJAX functions. Tested the search string generation, and tweaked the form field names so they make more sense as GET fields.

posting minutes worked on Report form GUI created

Worked with Stew to build the GUI for the stats report generator. Populated all the controls by querying the database through the B2Evo DB object. Seems to be working well.

Next steps:

• Write JavaScript code to build SQL statement based on form field values.
• Import and adapt AJAX code from ScanCan or Moses project and plug it into the hcmc_functions.js library.
• Add a progress bar to the page.
• Hook up the form-generated SQL to the AJAX submission system.
• Write the PHP handler on the back end to generate the report data (XHTML) from the submitted SQL.
• Write the JS code to drop the report XHTML into the page.

We need a page which provides a form-based interface where the user can select from variables (user, project, categories, etc.), press a button, and get a detailed report. This involves figuring out how the EZSQL-based code in B2Evo talks to the DB, and how to implement a control plugin properly.

Just logging time. Stewart's post and Martin's post provide the details.

The default skin ('custom') was showing overlap in the list of blogs at the top of the page. Experimented with various ways of fixing this, and eventually settled on adjusted padding, margins and line-height, and removed all margins.