Another new datatype suggestion: country

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Author	Message
Paul Forsyth	Friday 20 June 2003 12:48:41 am I currently have a user with a enum 'country' attribute and quickly realised entering country data would be a complete pain given that there are hundreds to be put in. Last night I wrote a simple sql script to insert all countries into the ezenumvalue table, using the country list from the ez shop and some emacs macros... I could add this as a contribution if anyone is interested. However, i now realise the best way to handle this would be as a datatype - a specialised enum. I would write this myself but i believe the text should change to handle different languages and im not confident on the php for that. Would such a datatype be useful? paul
Björn Dieding@xrow.de	Friday 20 June 2003 6:30:01 am We definitly need such thing. It would be some how connected to the local files. Because each Country comes with own states, telefon country code and so on. Looking for a new job? http://www.xrow.com/xrow-GmbH/Jobs Looking for hosting? http://hostingezpublish.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- GMT +01:00 Hannover, Germany Web: http://www.xrow.com/
Paul Forsyth	Friday 20 June 2003 6:44:17 am There are defintely lots that could go into this datatype. A .ini file may be useful for setting site parameters. A design is essential. Ez, have you considered something like this? Looking forward to 3.2 when i can 'port' my country enum around more easlily :) paul
Bård Farstad	Friday 20 June 2003 7:00:22 am Paul, we do not have specific plans to do a country datatype at this time. --bård Documentation: http://ez.no/doc
Paul Forsyth	Friday 20 June 2003 9:59:38 am I've tried out my sql script and have hit a snag relating to system speed. Once imported the database access to ezenumvalue becomes extremely slow and with ez default settings i hit the error: Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /var/www/html/sites/site/2767/kernel/classes/datatypes/ezenum/ezenumvalue.php on line 58 Fatal error: eZ publish did not finish it's request I've about 238 countries in my enum and this seems to kill the system, which suggests the datatype idea is kind of dead. Once cached this might help but it seems to be the wrong approach. The other way around this is code the data into a tpl file. I need to think more about this. Ez, how did you do it with your shop? Paul
Esben Maaløe	Saturday 21 June 2003 5:22:18 am Hi - I am VERY new to ezpub3 but have a good knowledge on the workings of ezpub2.x I have the same 'craving' for a country datatype - and I am currently implementing one (if I can). I think the key is to create a truly new datatype - and have the countrynames in templates (thus you can also translate them if you want to). Without having looked much at the DB structure I think it is clear that storing all datatypes in a generic fashion is very heavy in the amount of JOINS you have to do - so the ENUM type should be used with caution. I implement the country datatype because it will be very good exercise in the workings of ezpub3 - I hope that A. I'll be able to finish it and B. it will be good enough to share with you guys
Paul Forsyth	Sunday 22 June 2003 2:46:40 am I was thinking of working on that shortly as well, but if you are already working on it go ahead, im looking forward to see it. Any ideas when you will finish by? ;) Yes, the enum approach was wrong. I guess I had to try that approach to really find out the issues. Lesson learnt ;) paul
Esben Maaløe	Sunday 22 June 2003 5:25:35 am Here: http://ez.no/developer/ez_publish_3/contributions/datatype_ezcountry It doesn't do translations yet - and it doesn't store keys but the names of the countries. I haven't tested it as an information collector - so that part might not work. I won't work any more on it for a while as I have other things to do. But if anyone 'fixes' it to use keys and translations - I'd sure like to know about it :D
Paul Forsyth	Sunday 22 June 2003 5:52:49 am wonderful, esben! tomorrow i'll try using this and give feedback. thanks paul
Bård Farstad	Sunday 22 June 2003 5:54:56 am Paul: we've written a new shop account handler for our shop. This stores the person + address info seralized in xml in the order. We have all the coutries in the template and just store the selected country as a text, rather simple approach. --bård Documentation: http://ez.no/doc
Esben Maaløe	Sunday 22 June 2003 6:36:43 am Bård - as I see it in ezpub3, the philosophy has been to recognize basic patterns and then implement those. I mean what is the profound difference between a user and an article from a programming perspective ? In ezpub3 the answer is simple: There are no profound diffencies - they are both just collections of data. In fact when I started out doing a betting site - I wanted to do something similar - but quickly realised that there were NO WAY I could implement it within the given timeframe - so I went and used ezpub 2.x.x instead :) The country datatype that I've provided here is very simple - but in fact it holds all the patterns of an even more generic datatype (the one I call 'list') The (hypothetical) 'list' datatype is basically providing the same functionality as the (implemented) 'enum' datatype. But it doesn't hit the database - instead it holds it's list-items in text files. Thus it performs much better. When I get some more time - I'll take a stab at the 'list' datatype - but I need to get aquainted with the translation libs of ezpub3. The thing that worries me is with long lists (like a country list) you want as little processing as possible. So maybe you'd have to circumvent the i18 (or is i10? ) libs and simply have the lists in the locale folder. Circumventing the translation libs would introduce a new element in the ezpub3 architechture - hmmm lost sight of my point :) Just trying to say that something like this would be very valuable and worth some consideration. Hehehe - did I ask a question or did I just think aloud ? When I get some time I'll look into this (hopefully)