Adding Items Onto Search Detail Displays

Keith_k

Hello everyone,

I'm creating a prototype of a CollectiveAccess system for a small furniture collection at my university. I've recently installed Pawtucket, and it has converted most of what I set up in Providence into a usable website.

The main thing I want to change is what information is shown on the pages for each of the objects in the collection. I'd want to add in entries for the date of the project, the materials used, and a description describing the project in detail. Ideally, I'd want these to be pulled from the "dates", "materials", and "caption" (the last one I'm not sure of), entries that already have data in Providence.

As I understand, this is something that has been done by many CA-based collections, such as the examples on the website, and has been discussed quite often on these forums. Unfortunately, I've had difficulty understanding how to adapt the help given to my circumstance and version. One post suggests this is a complicated endeavor, but I think it is at least worth trying. My best guess on where to start is the "details" folder in pawtucket2/themes/default/views/details, but I'm not even sure of that.

What file(s) control where Pawtucket pulls from Providence, and what should I do to edit them?

Thank you in advance,
Keith

darrigan

Hi,
Do you consider that all objects that must display the same "dates", "materials" and "caption" metadata, belong to the same "collection"? (or "objects lot"?)

Keith_k

darrigan

Do I need to make an object lot or collection in order to get them to display?

I was planning on using collections for other purposes, since they seem like they already can easily be ported over from Providence to Pawtucket.

What I need help with is making the display of all of that metadata universal across the whole collection, just as how names, accession numbers, and creators show up in the base "install" of Pawtucket.

monica

Keith_k Before you do anything, you need to create your own theme, instead of using the default theme. This is to make it safe to upgrade in the future.
Copy the 'Copy me' theme into a new directory with the name of your theme. There are some read me's in each directory to help guide you.
Then copy any files you want to override from the default theme into you theme.

To edit the Object Detail page, you will need the file 'https://github.com/collectiveaccess/pawtucket2/blob/master/themes/default/views/Details/ca_objects_default_html.php' Copy this over and edit.

darrigan

Logically, a collection is designed to hold objects. Lots of objects serve the same purpose, but they are generally used when a set of objects comes from the same donor, for example, in order to record information about the coherence of that set.
When you create a new collection, you can enter metadata that describes to all the items it contains. And from within these objects, you can display the information extracted from that collection.

As Monica said, make your own theme, so if you break something in a file, you can revert to the original file.

It's easy to add new metadata to "object" or "collection" or "objects lot":

If not yet existing, you can create these new metadata in MANAGE > ADMINISTRATION > METADATA ELEMENTS > + New. Then, give a name for the metadata, a short description that will appear in the edit form, an element code that will be used to handle the metadata ("dates", "materials" and "caption" are good choices), a datatype "daterange" for "dates" and "Text" for "materials and "caption" (Be sure to choose which constraints you need for these metadata.). Select for which kind of elements this metadata will be attached, with Type restrictions part (Bind attribute to objects). Save.
Once created, add them to the User Interface for objects (or collections) in MANAGE > ADMINISTRATION > USER INTERFACES > choose the "Standard object editor" (or "Standard collection editor") to edit, then choose in which "SCREEN" you want to add the metadata (for example "Basic info"), then in the "Screen content" part, search for your metadata in the left side an drag them on the right side at the position you want). Save.
Go to edit an objet to see if your metadata is well located in the form. Enter a content and save.

To display your metadata in the Pawtucket Detail page, go to the Pawtucket folder /themes/<your_theme>/views/Details/. Duplicate the ca_objects_default_html.php file (just in case you break something) (the ca_collections_default_html.php), edit the file and at the right place you want to display the metadata, add it with {{{ ^ca_objects.my_metadata }}} tag. For example: {{{^ca_objects.dates}}} (for a collection: {{{^ca_collections.dates}}})
You should have a text before your metadata, so you need to check if the metadata is empty or not and only display it if it's not empty. So you will add a "ifdef" like this:

{{{<ifdef code="ca_objects.dates">Dates: ^ca_objects.dates</ifdef>}}}
{{{<ifdef code="ca_objects.materials">Materials: ^ca_objects.materials</ifdef>}}}
{{{<ifdef code="ca_objects.caption">Caption: ^ca_objects.caption</ifdef>}}}

If the metada to display come from the collection:
{{{<ifdef code="ca_collections.dates">Collection dates: ^ca_collections.dates</ifdef>}}}
{{{<ifdef code="ca_collections.materials">Collection materials: ^ca_collections.materials</ifdef>}}}
{{{<ifdef code="ca_collections.caption">Collection caption: ^ca_collections.caption</ifdef>}}}

Then go to the public page and see the result. (In some case, you'll have to flush the cache files in /app/tmp, and flush the cache files in your web browser.)

Keith_k

Sorry for the late reply, but I would like to thank you, @monica and @darrigan for your help. I've been able to edit my object display to show most of the information I want.

There is one thing that I believe I still need help with.

Since I'm building an archive for student work done under multiple professors, I would like to have a heading for the instructor that oversaw the project and the students who carried out the projects.

Thanks to darrigan's help, I was able to create a separate "Instructor" box in the edit screen in Providence, and I linked that to a new object/entity relationship I made under the same name. I continue to use the default "creator" box to list the students.

In Pawtucket, the students and instructor are listed all together under the "related people" tab. Looking at the code, I can glean that Pawtucket generates the display by calling on "ca_objects.related_entities".

Since the students and instructors are programmed under "related entities", they are displayed altogether. I can't tell what the syntax is for specifying a specific relation within related_entities. It's not as easy to understand as a metadata element.

Is this possible? Do I have to make a separate metadata element? If so, how do I do that?

darrigan

When you create a relationship between an object and an entity (or between any type of items and any other), it is possible (and indeed very useful!) to specify the relationship between the two, that is, to define several possible types of relationships between an entity and an object, or between an entity of type “Instructor” and an entity of type “Student” for example.

To do so, go to MANAGE > ADMINISTRATION > RELATIONSHIP TYPE > then choose "entity ⇔ entity relationships" or "entity ⇔ collection relationships", or "object lot ⇔ entity relationships", or "object ⇔ entity relationships" (depending of how you consider the archive made by student). So, choose one, and you'll see which kinds of relationship already exist between items. Suppose that the archives made by your students are type "object", you'll have to look the "object ⇔ entity relationships"; there, you can create a new relationship:

Relationship names
Typename (forward sense): work created by
Typename (reverse sense): creates
Relationship type code: created-by

and you can add some type restriction if needed. (Type restriction for "right" side of relationship could be "Student")

You can create another one, for example between entity "Instructors" and object, like:

Relationship names
Typename (forward sense): work supervised by
Typename (reverse sense): supervises
Relationship type code: supervised-by

(Type restriction for "right" side of relationship could be "Instructor")
Save.
Now, when you create a relationship, you can choose the good one. You can define one or more students, and one or more instructors linked to an object...

Note that the "Relationship type code" is important because you'll need it to display relationships by types in Pawtucket part.

To display these relationships in the Pawtucket part, you need to edit the detail page of object (ca_objects_default_html.php), and add somewhere:

{{{<ifcount code="ca_entities" restrictToRelationshipTypes="created-by" min="1" max="1"><H6>Related student:</H6></ifcount>}}}
{{{<ifcount code="ca_entities" restrictToRelationshipTypes="created-by" min="2"><H6>Related students:</H6></ifcount>}}}
{{{<unit relativeTo="ca_entities" delimiter="; " restrictToRelationshipTypes="created-by"><l>^ca_entities.preferred_labels</l></unit>}}}


{{{<ifcount code="ca_entities" restrictToRelationshipTypes="supervised-by" min="1" max="1"><H6>Related instructor:</H6></ifcount>}}}
{{{<ifcount code="ca_entities" restrictToRelationshipTypes="supervised-by" min="2"><H6>Related instructors:</H6></ifcount>}}}
{{{<unit relativeTo="ca_entities" delimiter="; " restrictToRelationshipTypes="supervised-by"><l>^ca_entities.preferred_labels</l></unit>}}}

If you want to display a relationship between two entities (instructor and student, for example), do the same thing, but add ".related" when you invoque relativeTo="ca_entities.related", because you display a link from entity to another entity.
I hope, it's clear for you!

Keith_k

This works, thank you so much!

For those reading this in the future, be sure to replace the relationships in quotes with whatever relationship id you would like to display.