Joomla! Discussion Forums

Hi Guys,

I was chatting with Johan late last night regarding a templating problem I was having, he mentioned to me that the following code:



Should give me the total number of modules published in user1, user2, user3 & user4 - however it doesn't, the value returned is always "1" unless there are no modules published in any of those positions in which case it returns "0".

I tested this on the latest SVN version (8399)

Waseem

Waseem I had the same conversation with Jinx some time ago and I tried to convince him that it did not work.
But now it seems that you are having the same problem.
I solved by splittiing it up like this:

Thanks Pieter,

I actually ended up with similar code, what I need to do is find out how many of the positions user1, user2, user3, and user4 have modules published in them rather than how many modules are published.

This is what I did:



Waseem

It looks like the countModules code has been changed from the one I originaly put in. I have changed it back to the original code and it should now be working again as expected. Changes will be in SVN when I get back home in 24 hours.

 

Thanks Johan!

I will do some testing of course, Johan

Code has been committed, found internet access on the airport. Check it out and let me know it works. It should

Confirmed

The code you mentioned does indeed work Johan - only problem I've got is that if I have 2 modules published in user1 and one published in user2 it's gonna return 3 (and rightly so), not the result I'm looking for though lol. I need it to return 2.

My fudged code works a treat for what i need but glad you got this one fixed

Waseem

I did a quick test last night (midnight) but it did not do what I was expecting.
May be I was a little sleepy! I will have another look but if it worked for waseem, it must be okay.

Waseem,

I'm afraid that what you are trying to do is not posisble with one countModules call. Could you explain why you need this functionality ?

Johan

Hi Johan,

The reason that I need this functionality is actually very simple :)

Say for example I have four "teaser" blocks in a row in my template, I might want to publish two modules in the first teaser block and one in each of two of the remaining three blocks - that adds up to 4 modules and 3 teaser blocks

Here's what I need to do:

1. If all four teaser blocks have modules published in them then the width of each of these teaser blocks must be 25% (100/4)
2. If three of the teaser blocks have modules published in them (regardless of how many modules in each block) then the width of each block must be 33% (100/3), the same goes for 2 teaser blocks and one teaser block (50% and 100% respectively)
3. Using the this->countModules function I can determine how many MODULES I have published but crucially I cannot work out how many module POSITIONS have modules published within them.

ie. given then above scenario the this->countModules function will return "4" the number of modules published, whereas I actually need to return "3" the number of module positions with modules published in them.


Hope this makes sense

Waseem

Hi Waseem,

What about using one module position and doing a count on the modules that are published in that position, instead of using different positions ? Wouldn't that solve your problem ?

Johan

U got me thinking there.....

I need to take heed of the comment you made the other day about looking at Joomla 1.5 templating from a different angle than Joomla 1.0.x templating

let me try something out and come back to you

Waseem

Hi Johan,

I tried what you suggested and it does indeed work - to an extent. Admittedly it meant I had to rethink my markup and use of css but I have it working now.

It still leaves me with the orignal problem though - in some circumstances I need to be able to count module positions with modules published rather than the number of modules published.

Figure1. thiscountmodules-jinx.png
Shows how the this->countmodules count can be used to work out the width of each module when all are published in one module position.

One needs to add this code to the head of the template's index.php file:


Then mark up the xhtml like this:


and the CSS like this:


Whereas,

Figure2. thiscountmodules-waz.png
Shows the limitations of the this->countmodules when trying to work out the width of each module position, when more than one module is published in on of those positions. As you can see the count is going to be 5 whereas I actually need 4

I have a working model of this second layout, although the CSS/XHTML code is sound (similar to the above) the php code's rather cludgy 

Waseem

Some short initial comments :

1. Why not using an inline css style ?

Instead of doing


You could so :


This means you can remove all of the extra css.

2. There is no need to make two calls to countModules you can do :



This spares you an extra call and makes the code more readable.

3. Instead of doing all this wrapping in your template you could write a special chrome function that wraps your module and does the hard work for you, example :



You will now need to create a custom modules.php file, add it to your termplate/html folder (see also the system template). The file will need to contain the following function :



This shows the true power of jdoc:include in action, take special note how the modules count is passed to the chrome function and used to calcumate the width of the module on the fly. This technique keeps you template code very lean and mean and allows you to create re-usable module wrappers.

Hope this helps.

PS. I have not tested the code, it should work though.

Update I  : made small change to the code to make it more flexible.
Update II : changed style="mystyle", to style="xhtml mystyle" to demonstrate cascading effect on module styles

what more can I say than wow!!

Thanks Johan!

That's sneaky, it never occurred to me to put php logic in the chrome....

Isn't that fixed to user1 though? I guess you could take out that id from the chrome...

One man's sneaky is another man's smart.



Fixed. Updated code a bit to improve flexibility.

Nice solution, Johan.
But to ask a question: what is the concept of a chrome? To me it is just a bit of (clever, in this case) code.
Why the name: chrome? Or is my english failing me?

The name chrome comes from GUI development, the chrome are the UI elements that are 'wrapped' around a window, for example the title bar, the status bar, ..... The word 'chrome' is used alot in Mozilla development, this is also where we lended the concept.

The concept behind a chrome function is very simple, it allows a template designer to create custom module wrappers 'chrome' as I demonstrated in my example.

By default the system provides the following chrome functions, none, table, horz, xhtml and rounded. These do the same as the old 0, -1, -2, -3 module styles. (You can find them in templates/system/html/modules.php)

This solution is indeed nothing more the a bit of PHP code, hehe, Joomla! is written in PHP afterall right What i think is the beauty of this concept is that it allows you to create your own module wrapper, you can even nest multiple wrappers. This gives the template developer a ton of re-usable flexibility.

It will probbaly take a while before template developers discover the true potential of this feature, but once they do they will see that the possibilities are almost endless. Hehe, I can think of some very nifty stuff I could do with module chrome, AJAX driven drag and droppable modules anyone ?

Chrome was actually in 1.0.

You could select -3 to get div div div. The most common use of this was to get 4 rounded corners (you got a block element for each corner).

1.5 allows you to customize the chrome, to acheive pretty much, as Johan says... anything.

@jinx
"Update II : changed style="mystyle", to style="xhtml,mystyle" to demonstrate cascading effect on module styles"

cascading...? how would that work?

Thanks very much, jinx and compass, for the explanation.
@jinx I can see wonderfull things coming on. Only AJAX is this football club in Amsterdam and it always confuses me.

What is an example of "Joomla 1.5 chrome can accomplish anything"?  You mean not limited to the standard module outputs (i.e. -1, -2, -3,.....xhtml, rounded ,etc.)?

That and more yes, it will be up to your own creativity.

The easiest way to think of it is that the -1, -2 etc are *examples* of chrome. Ones that are shipped with default Joomla install. You can make you own up to achieve needed effects.

Chrome is the generic name for any kind of module output....