Datasets

Kyle Fox's Avatar

Kyle Fox

13 May, 2010 04:45 AM via web

Me again :)

It would be extremely useful to be able to create a series of similar data objects. Could be used for FAQs, testimonials, staff members, etc. Right now in my "Team" template I've added person_1_name, person_1_bio, person_2_name ... etc., which is a lot of work and not very maintainable.

You could represent them in the admin similar to blogs; drill down into "Testimonials >" to see a list of all the testimonials and add more testimonials. Then all you need is a few simple template tags for retrieving datasets.

We did exactly this in a CMS I previously worked on -- we called the datasets blurbs. You would create a blurb type ("Testimonials") and then add blurbs. Blurbs could be directly attached to specific pages and then iterated in templates with {{ page.blurbs.testimonials }} or retrieved and iterated via template tags, ie:

  • {% get 7 testimonials %}
  • {% get all testimonials %}
  • {% get 3 random testimonials %}
  • {% get 5 recent testimonials %}

Anyway, just a suggestion. We found it to be a far more useful (and powerful) feature than we originally foresaw.

  1. Support Staff 2 Posted by Steve Smith on 13 May, 2010 03:17 PM

    Steve Smith's Avatar

    We DO plan to implement repeating data groups in template data. That said, what you're looking to do with person_1_name, etc., would be much more easily done by creating a 'team member' template with bio, photo, etc. and create subpages under 'Team' with each person. Then simply loop through them in the team template with {% for person in item.children %}

    Make sense? We know this solution isn't the best in some scenarios, but it will get you by for now.

  2. 3 Posted by Kyle Fox on 13 May, 2010 04:21 PM

    Kyle Fox's Avatar

    Awesome, thanks for the tip. Didn't realize that was possible. That will work perfectly fine.

  3. 4 Posted by John Nunemaker on 13 May, 2010 06:31 PM

    John Nunemaker's Avatar

    Yeah, we actually do this quite often and find it a nice way to architect
    your sites.

  4. Kyle Fox closed this discussion on 25 Jun, 2011 05:05 PM.

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