Windows XP Uploader with G2

we'll probably get to it eventually... anyone want to write it?

I think that we should maintain the same feature set as we have with G1. We should create a new module with an ItemAddPlugin that provides you with the registry file for XP, then provide it with a URL directly to a controller inside the new module which provides all the functionality that it needs. The remote module is a good example of how to do all of this. Look at modules/remote/GalleryRemote.inc to see how to do the command processing. We're around to provide guidance...

I believe I've answered my own questions. The way the publish mechanism in XP works forces the way the uploads are processed (after the XML is modified). And as for keeping the same protocol, to take advantage of some services offered by G2, I'm using the new form model which by definition means a different protocol.

rtdean, Thanks for offering to beta test it. I'll definitely take advantage of your offer! I should have something to try around the end of the week if not sooner. I'm changing the style and flow slightly to make it feel more integrated with the Publishing Wizard so when I send it along, I'd definitely appreciate feedback on how the user experience is in addition to whether it works or not.

This is a great start! I have a lot of comments, but I think that you're mostly
headed in the right direction we just need to do some course corrections. You
probably expected that, though If some of this stuff doesn't make sense then
let's talk it throuhg. Sounds to me like you've got a pretty good grasp of what's
going on though so I think most of what I say will make sense to you.

I did this review over two days so it might be a little disjointed, sorry! I
read through and commented on the code before answering your individual questions
(the answers to those are at the bottom of this post).

General issues:

• WizardPage.php, LoginPage.php, etc. should all be renamed to end in
  .class because we want to avoid having random files be executable
  out of context by the PHP engine. There's only one entry point into
  G2 and that's main.php.
• When I try to run it, I get a variety of "Notice: Undefined variable" warnings.
  When you develop for G2, you should configure your environment so that it's
  very restrictive (max warnings) so that it helps you to find areas where you're
  taking shortcuts that can cause problems on other systems. Read and follow
  the dev instructions here:
  http://gallery.sf.net/wiki.php?page=Development%20Environment
• I like the API that you've created with WizardPage, but ultimately I think
  that you're just reproducing what we already have with views and controllers,
  except that you're losing a little of the benefit. If you promote all of
  the WizardPage subclasses to be (non-immediate) GalleryView and GalleryController
  pairs, then you get a few advantages:
  • You can easily use templates which will give you separation between
    your code and content (which will greatly aid readability and is something
    that we are pretty strict about for core G2 code)
  • You can render all of your pages inside the gallery global template, which
    will cause your pages to look the same as the rest of the Gallery pages
  • You won't have an extra layer of abstraction
  • You can use our existing styles/themes and not have to write your own
    inline CSS

Since you have some HTML that you render on every page, you can follow
a model similar to UserAdmin (or ItemAdmin, SiteAdmin .. but UserAdmin is a
simpler example) where your url is to:
...g2_view=publishxp:PublishXP&g2_subView=publishxp:LoginPage...
this way it will load up the PublishXP view which can look for the subView
and call GalleryView::loadView() to load it up and $subView->loadTemplate()
to allow it to store its variables into the template. Then you render it all
at once. This will make your wizard look very much like every other view in
the system which will make it easier to support and extend in the future.
Also, separating out the code that changes the data model into controllers makes
it easier to write tests since it follows our conventional phpunit test model.

Style issues:

• curly braces should be on the same line as the calling construct, eg:
  

   
    if (foo) { 
      /* something */ 
    } else { 
      /* something else */ 
    } 
  

• Single line comments should be /* */ instead of //
• Static methods shouldn't have any whitespace around the "::"
  (first seen on module.inc line 51, 68)
• lines should not exceed 100 characters (first seen module.inc line 51).
• no spaces after the & reference operator (eg, "& $form" should be "&$form")

PublishXP.inc:

• methods that start with an underescore (_) are private, so you should
  not do:
  $page->_handleRequest(...)
  You might want to swap _handleRequest() and handleRequest() in WizardPage
  so that the public method doesn't have the underscore.

DownloadReg.inc:

• You don't need the controller here since you're not changing any data
  when you build the link on the ItemAddPublishXP.tpl do it like this:
  {g->url arg1="view=publishxp:DownloadReg"}
  and it'll use your view instead
• You don't need a form for this view. Form processing is useful when you
  want to maintain state between pages (or on subsequent reloads of the same
  page) but in your case you're sending just a command, so you can structure
  your params like this:

   
      $params['controller'] = 'publishxp:PublishXP'; 
      $params['cmd'] = 'publish'; 
      $genurl->generateUrl($params); 
    

To answer your specific questions:

1. If you use regular non-immediate views, you can use almost any of our
   existing views as examples of how to use templates in this case.
2. You can always localize things by using GalleryCoreApi::loadPlugin() to
   get the current module, and then calling $module->translate() on a string.
   But once you move all your content into templates, it's far easier to
   do {g->text}
3. I can see the advantage of making it more seamless with Gallery, but if
   you make your own style here then it won't be easily controlled by the
   theming system. I like the though that if you're uploading to a gallery then
   you see the look and feel of the destination during the upload process (it's
   like a portal into the destination site). Either way, it's going to be far
   easier to start by using the global template. If it looks really bad, we can
   make a streamlined template (a peer to global.tpl) that you can use instead
4. The name of the top level album is probably better. It's the only place where
   we allow you to customize the "name" of your G2 at the moment.
5. Your style looks very neat and clean. However, it doesn't quite conform to
   our conventions (http://gallery.menalto.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=GalleryDocs&file=index&page=gallery2-devguide.c\
   oding-standards.php). I had some comments on this above. I don't see any flaws
   with the mechanics of your OO work, except that I think that it's probably not the
   right design direction to be going in.
6. Unfortunately PHP 4.x does not support the $a->b()->c() syntax. PHP 5 does, but
   our compatibility target is 4.1
7. G2 will clean up dangling locks. If you think that your error can be caught and
   handled, then you should probably clean up any locks that you know of, but it's
   ok not to. Lock cleanup can be quite verbose and we can always do clean up later if we
   realize that there was a way to recover from the error.
8. You mainly want to write unit tests for your controllers, which will be changing your
   data model. Look at any of the ControllerTests in modules/core/test/phpunit. Mostly
   they make up dummy data, create a $form and let the controller do its thing, then
   validate that the results are correct. It's a bit tricky at first, but once you get
   the hang of it it's pretty simple to pound out new tests.
9. The forums are more active than the mailing list and are searchable, so this is a good
   place to ask this stuff.

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Yea .. I think that once we get something going we can take a look at it and figure out whether it's going to be too messy to do it with the global template. We may want to create a new "slim" template for things like this (but we can easily do that later once your code is templatized).

I use Emacs to do my PHP development. If you use php-mode.el, it does most of the work for you. Apply our php style on top of that and it'll conform to the G2 style (mostly).

Signe uses PhpED and likes it, I think. I'll let him weigh in on that.

In the screenshot below, I am now taking advantage of the templates (per recommendation). Apart from the screen being compact, I'm running into an issue with the layout. Could someone please point me at better CSS options to use in order that the components stretch to the right side of the screen? Here's what I'm using right now (the CSS tags lifted from another page under core):

<div id="gsAdminContents">
  <div class="gbTopFlag">
    <div class="gbTitle">
      <h2 class="giTitle">
        {g->text text="Choose the album for new items"}
      </h2>
    </div>
  </div>

  <div class="gbAdmin">
    <div class="gbDescription">
      {g->text text="...snip..."}
      <a href="javascript:createNewAlbum();">{g->text text="create a new album"}</a> {g->text text="...snip..."}
    </div>
    <div class="gbDataEntry">
      <select ......

[/code]

Also would like to help out testing, but also having problems installing! Any chance you could put a quick 'howto' up?

I've got the module installed and activated correctly but unable to to get the registry download working.

Thanks!

The files that I published previously would be extracted into the modules area under your gallery2 installation. That said, for PublishXP, I'm working on a rewrite given Bharat's comments on my first attempt. Given the magnitude of the changes, I'd ask that you wait to test it -- and then I'd definitely appreciate your help testing it out and giving feedback. Thanks!

Potentially, though I feel that naming items and descriptions is part of the core proficiency of Gallery. Or optionally you can assign useful filenames in the operating system prior to upload. If we do it as part of the upload process and for some reason, you have to abort, you end up loosing all of your work, whereas in Gallery or beforehand in the OS you have the same capability but it is persisted. The titles can be set to the filenames with or without the extensions but are always set.

Is what you are looking for an efficient way to name all items in an album?

yes, I found that all options inside gallery2 basically give you no options. You can choose sizes, orientations and type in a description.

I would like to be able to quickly set the title for 80 items and add a description if I want one for pictures comming from a digi-cam (so the filenames are always numeric) So having inputfields available without having to open a seperate page for each image or anything faster then that would be great!

Any ideas?

Try using <div id="gsContents"> instead of gsAdminContents. Does that fix it?

any updates? it doesn't work with my week old g2 build.
Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in .../modules/core/classes/GalleryModule.class on line 301

Line 301: if ($ret->isError()) {
return array($ret->wrap(__FILE__, __LINE__), null);
}

i am not seeking support. I do not expect anyone to drop whatever they were doing and start helping me with my problems.
Since this module not in CVS. in the best case scenario, i expected to find some leads on where i should search for updates....
sorry if my post sounded like request or something...

the funny part is that after giving error, this module got activated after 2nd try.
i blindly tried to guess how i should tweak my registry to make it work.... miserably failed.... oh well, it's not first, and not last time

Bump.

Another user looking for this to allow my wife the easiest way to upload.
Upgraded from G1 to G2 (and it's now part of our Drupal blog), but I miss this feature. Doesn't install on current Beta.

I've finally put together an updated version of the publishxp module that I originally put together for an early version of G2. This includes most of the recommendations that Bharat made, however I have other tweaks left to make including phpunit integration. I've tested with this Gallery 2's latest version in CVS. One note, you may have to re-register your gallery with XP using the Add Items -> Windows XP option and downloading the appropriate registry file.

Download the updated module from:
http://www.pospues.com/addons/publishxp.zip

Please let me know any comments or problems you have using this module.

Good luck. Tim

i get the following error:

Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR in /modules/publishxp/DownloadReg.inc on line 48

Same error here, less than PHP5 (PHP 4.something)

Re-published with the updates -- actually had the exact same code you mentioned down to the variable name ;-) Thanks for confirming that this fixed it. Hopefully this now keeps working through the G2 final release. Now it's working for others, I'll go through and clean up the code per Gallery style conventions. Cheers

Just installed G2 (Dark - Beta1) - works and looks great!.

Download your most recent version of the XP Publishing tool. When I go to gallery modules/import I get the following error showing up:

Publish XP 0.9.1 Implementation for direct publishing from XP
Incompatible module! Core API Required: 5.0 (available: 4.0)

Not sure what it means by "Core API Reqired: 5.0 (availablle: 4.0)"

Thoughts?

Cheers,
Curt

Installed this module this morning and gave it a quick run. Originally had the same issue as internetgardener, but grabbed the latest snap and updated the beta rather than hack the version required in the module.

Pospues, great work! Download of the registry file was flawless, and the upload worked perfectly. Very nice piece of integration work.

On a side note to the devs: great work also on the updater! I went from the Dark Fibre beta release to the current CVS snap, and the update process was faultless. Very slick work from all involved.

Cheers,

Rich

Everything works fine for me untill i go to view the albums i have uploaded. There is nothing there. www.therehmsonline.net is the site. Anyone else having this problem?

Thanks Pospues - again, worked great.

i am now running into same issues as arehm. Images don't show up once uploaded. Still trying to diagnose the problem.

IG.

I get a "Internet Explorer Script Error" when I try to uppload, it come's up when the upload is about to start.
ROW: 50
Char: 31
URL : mail.php