[trendoman]

KK,

Probably you have seen this type of editable field in Drupal - here is a short video (best at 5:26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO3qXTE ... u.be&t=326

So it's kinda a single dropdown field, but supports hierarchy and is visually represented by dynamic number of select elements.

Any chance on adding this to Couch?

[KK]

No, I hadn't seen that Anton; thanks for the link.
I'll take a look.

Hi Anton and Kamran,

I want to say that this functionality would be very powerful. In many cases I have problems because at this point it is missing.
Please for such a decision!

[KK]

@trendoman, @orbital,
Maybe I am a little thick skulled but could you please make me understand the utility of this (apart from the obvious cosmetic factor)?

I mean, I can understand the importance of cascading dropdowns in scenarios where each dropdown fetches data from a *separate* template and the templates happen to be related to each other e.g. Manufacturer, Product etc.

In the given video, however, the data source is a single hierarchical tree. So, say we were to display the tree in a single dropdown (e.g. as is done for folders in Couch), how is that approach different (again, not taking the cosmetic angle into consideration)?

Am I missing something obvious? Please correct me.

[trendoman]

Kamran,

If such hierarchical 'folders' tree has over 20000 elements as in Ivo's case, it creates certain inconveniences. Ajaxified loading of the tree would be a solution.

The other use case (separate templates Vs single template with multitude of folders) looks very similar to me.

Hi Kamran,
It's really about quantity, here's a real example -
In one of my e-shops there is a main folder "Products"
It has sub folders (categories ) "Summer tires" "Winter tires" "Car accessories" ...
In each of these category folders, there are sub sub folders for subcategories that exceed 100 - 200 for each.
At this point, they are all dissolved and the administrator has difficulty finding the necessary folder to create or edit a product.

However, there is also a significant technical problem.
If the folders are 10,000 browsers should display all folders each time the page is loaded and a significant delay is observed.
However, if only the main folders are shown and not all available folders then the browser will show very few folders and so it should be.

[trendoman]

I created two solutions for this subject. Only my task was a tad different.

One, it is based on skipping folder / pages listing completely ( makes browser and Admin panel responsive again ) — Administrator enters first letter and dropdown (query to backend) offers variants that has this letter in title. Letter-by-letter, there are narrowing options and this allows to quickly establish parent-child association.

Two, I placed a dropdown with dynamic opt-values (only top-level) inside a row. Modded "content_form" theme snippet to show the top-level (or 2-level, if there are few <options>) dropdown on create-view screen. Then Administrator saves the page and another (second) children dropdown (with inner folders options) appears only on edit-view screen. If Administrator decides to change parental association and clicks the top-level first dropdown, it triggers the form submit → page saves and reloads with new values in the second dropdown again. Administrator chooses the folder in second input and that's it.

P.S. Modding content_form is pretty fun. On another template In create-page view I offer a choice with radio and on edit-view completely skip this radio by not outputting it at all. I remember a question left without answer about hiding a controlling checkbox.This also applies to such cases.