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New feature : User Defined Fields

Posted: 2004-05-27 13:44:52
by TekmanRO
Hi. I think this would be a great addition to AMC, adding the possibility for the user to define his(her) own fields. I think this could be done very easily in new version 4, since I see you are going for a XML approach for the new file format. You could add a new node to the movie definition, such as:

Code: Select all

<movie>
  ....
  <userDefined>
     <field name="MyOwnField" type="text"> ...some value here... </field>
     <field name="MyOwnImage" type="image"> ...some value here... </field>
     <field name="HasMyGirlfriendSeenIt" type="boolean"> ... some value here ... </field>
  </userDefined>
</movie>
Well, you got the picture ;) . I don't know if it's necessary to add a type to the fields, they could all be treatied as text, or string.

As for displaying them to the user, you could use a simple grid ( field | value), add editing capabilities to the second column (value), and that's it.

The fields (name & type) could be kept as some sort of "meta"s in the XML file, and thus they could be per-catalog, and not global. When an user adds a new field, the whole XML is parsed, and a new node for the field is added to each movie's <userDefined> node.

Scripting support for these user defined nodes could be added by a general function, such as SetField(fieldUserDefined, "myOwnField", Value);

Hmm... just an idea I've got... don't know really if it's as simple to implement as it sounds. :)

Posted: 2004-05-27 13:48:15
by antp
I wanted to do that, but since it would be quite complicated to manager I'll put lots of fields and let the user select which one he wants, and customize them.
See the topic at the top of the list, in the "Comments" section.