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.)