Scheduling publishing

there has been some talk about publishing, but no code that i know of.

start with lib/tools/creator to help you create your own module.

Here is one possible way to support publishing:
- module has an ItemEditOption to add a form on the General tab of ItemEdit to set publish and/or expire date for items.
- dates are stored as plugin parameters for your module
- when either date is set, the option adds an onLoadHandler for the item.
- this handler checks the current time against the publish/expire time and takes any action that is needed, removing its own handler once the action is taken
- i guess publish adds core.viewAll permission for Everybody group, expire removes core.viewAll.. or maybe a site admin option to choose whether you publish with viewAll or just view/viewResizes.

I'd really appreciate if you do develop a solution to this one if you'd let me know as it would be a 'must have' for a new site I am looking at putting together, and this is a show stopper for me using Gallery 2 at the minute.

Thanks,
Paul

I'm making headway with this module, basing most of my work on the "Hidden Items" module that comes prepackaged with G2.

I've successfully got it operating as essentially a cloned module of Hidden Items with file/directory/variable names changed, and I figured the easiest way to do this is to tie it into the "Date and Time" function that is already in ItemEditItem (saved to the DB as originationTimestamp, if I'm grokking the structure here....)

I think all I need to do still is add this bit of code:

$timestamp = $item->getOriginationTimestamp();
if ($timestamp <= time()) {
unScheduleItem($item);
}

But I'm not entirely sure where it would go... I'm posting this in the hopes that I may hear a response back before I can figure it out on my own.

Thanks for a great program, I look forward to making my small contribution to the code community when this is done.

Ok, thanks for the tips... but I'm not entirely clear on why it would be bad to use origination timestamp, it seems to me that if you're going to schedule an album to publish a week from today, you would want the origination timestamp to reflect that future date, and it seems simpler to use the existing field than to create a new parameter which you would want to hold the same data as originationtimestamp already does. And having this module active won't necessarily make a post-dated album invisible, only if the "schedule for later publication" checkbox is checked. Maybe I'm missing something...

Thanks for the info, hopefully it will be enough to get this module working...

Any news on this module yet? I'd love to have this feature in my site.

The following code is resulting in an empty newPublishTimestamp variable... any idea what I'm doing wrong?

$newPublishTimestamp = mktime($form['publishTimestampSplit']['Time_Hour'],
$form['publishTimestampSplit']['Time_Minute'],
$form['publishTimestampSplit']['Time_Second'],
$form['publishTimestampSplit']['Date_Month'],
$form['publishTimestampSplit']['Date_Day'],
$form['publishTimestampSplit']['Date_Year']);
$ret = GalleryCoreApi::setPluginParameter('module', 'schedule',
'publishDate', $newPublishTimestamp, $item->getId());

Okay gonna try this again with a little more specificity...

I've successfully got the module hiding anything with an onLoadHandler of "Scheduled", and a PluginParameter that contains the publication date, but I can't seem to figure out exactly how the onloadHandler works... is it checking for this onLoadHandler every time the album is loaded, and does it need to be directly accessed in order to trigger the onloadHandler? Does it trigger the onLoadHandler if I'm in the parent folder that contains the scheduled item (looking at its thumbnail, not in the scheduled album yet)?

If so, it seems like the onLoadHandler should be able to check the current date against the pluginParameter and if the scheduled date has been hit, it should unhide/publish the album and remove the onLoadHandler, right?

I can upload my source if it helps... sorry if I'm a pain in the ass with this, I just know I'm close and lots of people have been asking for this feature so I'd like to finish this project ASAP.

Thanks!!!

So you're using the onLoad handler just as trigger to check if it's time to publish/expire the item? Just as a replacement for a cron job?

But if you do the actual publishing/expiration by adding/removing the "view all" permission, why should the onLoad handler ever be called? It would only be called if an admin is browsing the site...
I guess I don't understand your approach.

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Documentation: Support / Troubleshooting | Installation, Upgrade, Configuration and Usage

this approach works for hidden items because the way to see a hidden item is to use the URL directly for that item.. thus G2 loads the item and the handler is run.. permission can be granted.

in your case people are browsing albums that may contain items ready to publish... since general users/guests don't have permission for the unpublished items they won't be loaded by G2, handler to publish them doesn't run.. (until an admin browses, as valiant mentioned).

we don't have any cron like facility yet, so anything in that area will be breaking new ground.. but of course cron is the right model for publish/expire. the only alternative that comes to mind is putting an onLoadHandler in the parent of the item to-be-published.. each time that album is loaded (by users/guests) it could scan the child items to see if any should be published now. not ideal, but maybe workable in the current system.

I think I've finally got this cracked, but I've hit one final obstacle.

I tried adding a function for getItemSummaries to my module.inc, primarily because I wanted to allow admins to see the scheduled date when an album is set to publish at a glance, and that works.

Well, it got me to thinking that I could use the same getItemSummaries function to affect code displayed for every album, scheduled or not - so I decided to embed my pseudo-cron job in there... basically, once in every few hundred times the getItemSummaries function is called, it will check the PluginParameters to see if any scheduled albums have a publish date greater than or equal to the current date/time. That worked, and my query returned the IDs of albums which needed to be published.

Unfortunately, when I called unScheduleItem, I got an error because I wasn't passing the actual item to the function, just the itemId... since getItemSummaries isn't calling the item in question, I'm not sure what to do. Is there a way to invoke an instance of an item with its ID number, so I can pass it to this function?

Please say yes... if so, I'm done with this puppy - otherwise, I've got to find a different way to do this. I'm not sure how to go about using the onLoadHandler in the parent function, any tips would be helpful, I constantly get lost in the code of this program when I go exploring

I was getting a "member function on a non-object" error, if I remember the wording correctly... loadEntitiesById worked, and the module is doing exactly what it's supposed to now! Huge thanks to mindless and valiant for your help with my incessant questions.

I'm gonna go do some more testing on this, once I'm sure everything is relatively copacetic I'd like to release this code to the public for use and improvement - some of my code is a little wonky, I'm sure the experts can clean it up a bit, but it WORKS! Haha... sorry, just a little excited to have this finally done. How can I submit this module to the community?

EDIT: I have attached a .ZIP file with my functional module as it exists now.

EDIT 7/30/07 - New .ZIP file uploaded, ScheduleHelper.class was causing errors with recursive scheduling of children.

Done.

This is Cool!
I have created a codex page as well:
http://codex.gallery2.org/Gallery2:Modules:schedule
feel free to add and or edit.

Dave
_____________________________________________
Blog & G2 || floridave - Gallery Team

chivas12,
FAQ: I have a problem with something, what should I do?
FAQ: What information is required when I ask for help in the forums?
Give us some more info:
FAQ: How to set/use Gallery in debug mode?

Dave
_____________________________________________
Blog & G2 || floridave - Gallery Team

Hi Heruraha

Great and important plugin, but on my testing site dont work. All other (incl. 3d party) works with no problems. I still have screen with:

Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO)

Regards

Pawel

I got the same message:

Did anyone find a answer to this problem?

Thomas

For anybody that wants to get their feet wet and continue on this module:
One of the first steps needed is:
* Error handling pattern changed. Old:

 if ($ret) { 
   return $ret->wrap(__FILE__, __LINE__); 
 }

new:

 if ($ret) {
   return $ret;
 }

http://codex.gallery2.org/Gallery2:API_Changes_From_2.0_To_2.1

good luck,

Dave

_____________________________________________
Blog & G2 || floridave - Gallery Team