Joomla! Forum - community, help and support

caveywavey wrote: I'm currently evaluating Joomla 1.5 for a future project and I hope somebody can help me with custom metatags - the project requires the content creation date and last modified date to be in the metadata amongst other things.

I have (either rightly or wrongly) found that:
1) editing the metadata parameters group in the administrator/components/com_content/models/article.xml file will give new metadata fields when editing an article which will then appear in the head section of the document if they're not empty.
2) editing the libraries/joomla/document/html/renderer/head.php file can be useful for adding custom metatags which are either constant or created programatically.

I have searched the forum/googled and found that there is a getModifiedDate function, but when I try and use it in the head.php file it always returns an empty string - unfortunately there doesn't appear to be a similar function for the created date.

I'm hoping that I can use the data stored about the article in the database table rather than recreate it by using the xml file to define the same data again.

spiderglobe wrote: First I must say a great solution to implement a separated metadata field in the article table! In this way the META data can be extend anyway and is automatically presented within the view.html.php within the article view. Just great.

Looking at the Article META data structure then I see that the structure is read from the article.xml from the models directory under com_content. This limits the extension of the META data structure to the articles. Sometimes you want to extend the META structure for specific purposes. Anyway it should be nice if this META data structure could be extended easily, for example with a separate XML just for the META data where third party XML meta structure could be added. This could be a "general" META XML structure used for all Joomla items (menu elements, articles, FAQ, etc..). 

Looking at the MENU elements there is no metadata field in the menu table. Make this work the same as within the article structure (by using a generic XML meta file for all core Joomla elements).

What I'm also missing is a separate field in the Joomla items (= articles, menu, FAQ, etc..) where I can put a HTML title in. Note that this is different element then the page title which should appear in the HTML body section (with any tag the designer wants to assign to).

Also notice that when that the META fields are present when they are empty. Please don't display the META field if they don't have any content.

Hackwar wrote: Hi yvolk,
I have to admit, that I don't completely understand what you are trying to achieve. Are you trying to add something like

Code: Select all

somemetatag=somedata

into the meta field in the article editing screen or are you trying to add new fields via the article.xml?

yvolk wrote: Joomla! database structure IS able to store as much metatags (tags and their values), as I may need (this is TEXT field, so it has plenty of room ).

pixelsoul wrote:

yvolk wrote: Joomla! database structure IS able to store as much metatags (tags and their values), as I may need (this is TEXT field, so it has plenty of room ).

Umm why would you ever want to store comments + tags in the article field ?

masterchief wrote: The "intention" of the unified metadata field was to provide a basis for custom/configurable user metadata.  Basically the idea would be to allow you to drop in an xml file that defines whatever standard or home-grown scheme you want (Dublin core, etc) and store it in a params (that is, ini) format.  We just ran out of time to implement it in 1.5.

yvolk wrote:

masterchief wrote: The "intention" of the unified metadata field was to provide a basis for custom/configurable user metadata.  Basically the idea would be to allow you to drop in an xml file that defines whatever standard or home-grown scheme you want (Dublin core, etc) and store it in a params (that is, ini) format.  We just ran out of time to implement it in 1.5.

1. Now we know, that it is right move to use "metadata" field of "content" table to store some additional meta tags (in ini format). (BTW, this field was added by masterchief on 03-Jun-2006 - more, than a year ago...)
2. The whole framework to extend "metadata" field (through XML files) is not implemented yet and will not be done at least in the forthcoming release of Joomla!
3. So, we have at least three simple ways on this subject:
3.1 Don't use "metadata" field at all and wait for the great future, when full support of extending Article metadata will be implemented by Dev team.
3.2 Each administrator on each site: Manually hack (edit) that administrator/components/com_content/models/article.xml file (and, maybe, something else) to include new custom meta tags.
3.3 Ask Joomla! team to make small fix in the way metadata field is stored now: so custom metatags wouldn't be erased by Joomla! Content Editors (Article Manager...). And add custom meta tags to the metadata field without any framework, XML support, etc...
That "small fix" may be implemented in such a way, that it would prevent Joomla! extensions to erase metadata, unknown to them - just the same way as for Joomla! Content Editors (e.g. injecting this fix into, e.g. JTableContent class...)

I propose the third way, that gives us opportunity to extend Content (Articles) NOW!

What do you think, Community?

ianmac wrote: I STRONGLY STRONGLY disagree.  I know it may seem like a very small thing, but it really is too late in the game to do that...

there was no any release of Joomla!, that had it

ianmac wrote: I guess what I'm getting at is that there has to be a point where you cut something off and say, these are all the features
we're going to have, and no more, otherwise we never get to release.

masterchief wrote: Adding a panel to edit metadata is one thing - but it dominoes down the chain...

    $metadata = JRequest::getVar( 'meta', null, 'post', 'array');
    if (is_array($params))
    {
      $txt = array();
      foreach ($metadata as $k => $v) {
        if ($k == 'description') {
          $row->metadesc = $v;
        } elseif ($k == 'keywords') {
          $row->metakey = $v;
        } else {
          $txt[] = "$k=$v";
        }
      }
      $row->metadata = implode("\n", $txt);
    }

masterchief wrote: What I suggest you do is work on the whole "patch" that would be required, test it thoroughly, and then submit it for us to consider dropping directly into 1.6 having already been road tested to a degree.

What I suggest you do is work on the whole "patch" that would be required, test it thoroughly, and then submit it for us to consider dropping directly into 1.6 having already been road tested to a degree.

I may promise to make fix in the scope of the above cited code. Two weekdays from the time you agree

I guess what I'm getting at is that there has to be a point where you cut something off and say, these are all the features we're going to have, and no more, otherwise we never get to release.

The conflict: on one hand I completely understand his reasoning - we definitely want to get to a stable release; on the other hand, this kind of comment can discourage capable developers from contributing to J! development.

I propose the third way, that gives us opportunity to extend Content (Articles) NOW!

What do you think, Community?

It was is my mind that people should chuck as much contributions as possible and the Dev team could then cherry pick the best. 

ianmac wrote:

I propose the third way, that gives us opportunity to extend Content (Articles) NOW!

What do you think, Community?

I was replying especially to the 'NOW' part.

masterchief wrote: Please don't stop tickering with the patch...

If you enabled guests to add comments, and you want to allow guest to add link to his (or her) Web page to the comment, you have to set "Allow guests to link to a site" option also. This link is stored in the "metadata" field of the comment.
Please note, that due to the known bug in Joomla! core (see Topic: Extending metadata of Articles (Poor
implementation of content metadata saving)) if you edit existing Comment from
the backend using Joomla! "Article Manager", this link would be
erased. So don't use "Article Manager" to edit comments, made by guests, in
conjunction with this option.

ooffick wrote:Mod note: Please open your own topic, if you have a specific question about something, This topic is almost 2 years old.

yvolk wrote:the most important thing is exactly that this bug is two years old and is not yet fixed