upm_tags

Mary · 2005-10-08 06:25:49

upm_tags (pre-release)
Create and manage your own Textpattern tags.

It is important for me to include the following. This plugin is not for beginners. Use of this plugin is acceptance of the terms, whether you read it, or like it, or not.

Attention: Disclaimer and Terms of Use

This plugin does not make tags or plugins for you, nor debug or correct mistakes. While the plugin should respect your production mode, it isn’t advisable to use the plugin like a kind of ide for a live site. Always, always, always test in a development environment on your own computter, and never create a development environment on your web hosting server.

If you do this anyway, don’t expect help if you break your site, ruin your plugins, trash your database, or get kicked off your hosting because you did something naughty or stupid.

The PHP you use via this plugin is not supported by me in the slightest and expecially not by the Textpattern developers. You use it, you accept the responsibility for what you do with it. If you don’t like that, go elsewhere, this plugin isn’t for you. Don’t check your brain at the door, and have blissful serenity. :)

With that out of the way…

The beauty of Textpattern tags is the fact that a tag is just a PHP function, so if you understand PHP, its not hard to create a plugin that supplies you with new tags. Plugins make it easy to distribute your changes, allowing users ease of install as well as supplying them with documentation.

Sometimes, though, you don’t want to make a plugin. Perhaps you don’t want to support it, or maybe you don’t want to bother with creating a proper plugin for something only you will use, especially if it is only a couple lines.

You then have two options:

Place your PHP inside its own file, then utilize Textpattern’s ability to load it, even though it isn’t a true plugin.
Use this plugin.

The pros for using the plugin are that you can then easily enable or disable various portions of code, the ability to save “notes” as reminders or perhaps “to-do” lists (like plugins’ help documentation), and finally, its all in the database, easy to backup and restore.

The cons, which are the other option’s pros, is that your PHP will get extracted from the database, then eval-ed. In the instance of large scripts or perhaps libraries, the first method is likely your best bet.

Other relevant info

This plugin is pretty sparse, there isn’t much to it.
User permissions for it are the same as the permissions for plugins.
The PHP you create with it is only loaded on the public side. Any kind of admin-side tomfoolery deserves to be a plugin.
The plugin is pre-release, as such there is no documentation or appropriate credit notes accompanying it, and I am accepting suggestions for it as well as the plugin itself.
There isn’t much in the way of special features. The one thing it has is if you use one of my other plugins, upm_insert_tab, its functionality is available to you. If you don’t use that plugin, nothing is changed or less functional within this plugin itself.
There are no other special checks. It doesn’t check syntax or only allow tags, and so on. Whatever you put in it gets loaded as-is, so take care.
It can install or uninstall the table required, but only does so at your direction. Please let me know if this process isn’t very smooth or is confusing.

Download

How you can help

Let me know…

if you see a bug or even an annoyance
if the interface is confusing
what kind of documentation should accompany it
if there useful features that are missing

Being pre-release, it’s all fair-game, so see what you can throw at it. :)

Last edited by Mary (2006-01-03 02:17:54)

Mary · 2005-12-09 17:10:57

Is there any interest in this at all, for me to continue developing it?

els · 2005-12-09 18:14:54

Yes, please. I just haven’t had the time to have a look at it. I was hoping to be able to use this to practice my php skills ;) If it’s not fit for that please say so.

hakjoon · 2005-12-09 19:14:35

Same here. I also haven’t had a chance to play with it yet but I think it could be a great addition to allow users to create custom tags without going through the plugin process.

Mary · 2005-12-09 20:59:06

Okay, wanted to make sure since I hadn’t heard a peep about it, one way or the other.

Yeah, you can use it to play with, I just would recommend not doing that on a live server.

creativesplash · 2005-12-10 05:22:56

This is just awesome! Now, I can play around without modifying existing plugins:) This has to be part of the Textpattern core! Have you submitted this to the devs? (If you havent, I think you should do it right away!).

creativesplash · 2005-12-10 05:27:51

btw… Can you create an option for exporting each tag as a plugin? That’d make things really easy for plugin devs (you should know) :)

soulship · 2005-12-10 11:45:51

I’m interested too, but I don’t have a sanbox site to play with at the moment. I think maybe your terms scared some people off too. :) So let me get this right. All of the php includes that I have splattered here and there on some of the sites I manage can be umbrella’ed in a table and called with a tag instead of a form or huge blocks of code in my page templates.

Is that the gist?

Last edited by soulship (2005-12-10 11:46:48)

Mary · 2005-12-10 20:06:11

This has to be part of the Textpattern core! Have you submitted this to the devs? (If you havent, I think you should do it right away!)

I haven’t, but I had thought of that.

Can you create an option for exporting each tag as a plugin?

Yes, I could do that.

I think maybe your terms scared some people off too. :)

That’s good! If they scare “Bob”, the hypothetical Txp user, then “Bob” shouldn’t be using it. That’d mean unfamiliarity with PHP as well as running development code on a live server. Imagine a while loop of death that sends an email…

And obviously (or maybe only obvious to me), I’m only interested in developing and supporting plugins to be used for the people and/or purpose they were created for, so if that means no one then away it would go (publicly anyway, I’d still use it myself).

And so, my terms have served my purposes. :)

Is that the gist?

Yep.

Last edited by Mary (2013-01-24 17:34:20)

tinyfly · 2006-02-09 07:06:45

mary is no longer maintaining this plugin – a copy of the last release is available here from upm-plugins archive

Inspired · 2006-02-10 15:29:41

This one is really great for me, somehow I overlooked it earlier. Perhaps someone (if not Mary) could update it to allow plugin export, then it simply would be a must have plugin for developers.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2005-10-08 06:25:49

upm_tags

Attention: Disclaimer and Terms of Use

With that out of the way…

Other relevant info

How you can help

#2 2005-12-09 17:10:57

Re: upm_tags

#3 2005-12-09 18:14:54

Re: upm_tags

#4 2005-12-09 19:14:35

Re: upm_tags

#5 2005-12-09 20:59:06

Re: upm_tags

#6 2005-12-10 05:22:56

Re: upm_tags

#7 2005-12-10 05:27:51

Re: upm_tags

#8 2005-12-10 11:45:51

Re: upm_tags

#9 2005-12-10 20:06:11

Re: upm_tags

#10 2006-02-09 07:06:45

Re: upm_tags

#11 2006-02-10 15:29:41

Re: upm_tags

Board footer