Storing a textarea's value into a database table - database

How can you get the value of a <textarea> and store it in a MySQL database table?
I'm using TinyMCE 3.3.9.3.

Seeing as no one has answered your question I thought I'd chip in. Have you ever managed to get any form data passed into a database before (I.E is it just accessing a textarea that's the problem), or is this a general question about how to put form data into databases?
One thing I would strongly recommend is moving away from WYSIWYG style editors if your seriously considering doing web development properly. From experience no matter how good they claim to be you'll always encounter cross browser problems and at some point you'll have to dig into the code and understand it.
Sorry this isn't a direct answer, but with a bit more info as to what you need to know I'm sure we can help... I warn you though, if you've not had much experience at this some of the answers could be a bit deep. I think maybe this is why you've not had any responses because the answer require could potentially be quite epic,lol.
Dan

The tinymce editor id equals the textarea id.
Assuming that editor is your tinymce editor instance you may use the following to get the textareaa content (which is then equal to the editor content).
editor.triggerSave(); // update the textarea
var textarea_element = document.getElementById(editor.id); // get the updated textarea
var content = textarea_element.innerHTML; // this is the content
// now you need to call a script to save the content (i suggest you use ajax)
...

Related

How to get the TipTap Editor to recognize updated external state values

This is likely an issue with my inexperience using React generally, but I'd still greatly appreciate any insights.
I've added a commenting plugin to the TipTap editor.
When I create a new comment, it creates a DB record for the comment and I store that new comment in a state value (React) which is an array of all comments.
Then I return the ID which I use in a setComment (Mark) command that wraps the selection in a span with a commentId on the data-comment attribute.
When I click on that span, I can get the ID value, but the editor selectionUpdate function doesn't see the updated value. The page can access it fine, but that function can't see it until the page is reloaded.
How do I convince the editor to recognize the updated value in that function?
A minimal app demo can be found here:
Once you make a comment, and click on it, you'll see that it doesn't find the newly added comment. That's what I'm try to fix. It should be able to find it.
I understanding the the useEffect isn't being updated because the dependency array does not include chapterComments - but if I add it, then selectionUpdate runs multiple times and only the last one is accurate. I don't know how to appropriate destroy or update the editor instance - though I assume that's what I need to do.
The TipTap editor hook, const editor = useEditor, has it's own dependency array. Instead of trying to use useEffect with an editor dependency, just use the built in one for any values the editor needs to keep track of.
/facepalm

Interpolating custom data onto a PDF

I am building an Angular test preparation app (with Laravel 5.1 API). One of the requirements is to allow the user to print a certificate of achievement.
The client wants the person's name and credentials interpolated into the document (e.g., highlighted below). Here is a snapshot of the PDF template they sent:
The way I'm handling PDF viewing is simply by storing the file on S3 and giving them a link to that file.
Interpolating information into a PDF doc doesn't seem trivial and I haven't found much information on programmatically allowing this, but there are tools like DocHub, that allow you do edit while viewing the PDF.
I'm interested in learning:
is doing this programmatically trivial?
are there 3rd party tools I'm unaware of?
would I even be able to send this information along to the S3 link to interpolate in the first place?
Using PDF as a format for editing is usually a bad choice. If you have a form with fixed fields, then it's easy. Create a PDF template with an interactive form. In this form, based on AcroForm technology, you'll define fields with fixed coordinates, and a fixed size. You can then add content to these fields.
One major disadvantage with this approach is the lack of flexibility. Did you notice that I used the word "fixed" three times in the previous paragraph? If text doesn't fit the predefined field, you're out of luck. If the field is overdimensioned, you'll end up with plenty of white space. This approach is great if you can predict what the data will be like. A typical use case is a ticket or a voucher. For instance: the empty form is a really nice page, with only a couple of fields where an automated system can put a name, a date, a time, and a seat number.
This isn't the best approach for the example you show in your screen shot. The position of every line of text, every word, every character is known in advance. If you want to replace a short word with a long word (or vice-versa), then all those positions (of each line, of the complete page, possibly of the complete document) need to be recalculated. That's madness. Only people with very poor design skills come up with such an idea.
A better idea, is to store the template as HTML. See for instance chapter 5 of iText's pdfHTML tutorial, where we have this snippet of HTML:
<html>
<head>
<title>Invitation to SXSW 2018</title>
</head>
<body>
<u><b>Re: Invitation</b></u>
<br>
<p>Dear <name>SXSW visitor</name>,
we hope you had a great SXSW film festival experience last year.
And we would like to invite you to the next edition of SXSW Film
that takes place from March 9 until March 17, 2018.</p>
<p>Sincerely,<br>
The SXSW crew<br>
<date>August 4, 2017</date></p>
</body>
</html>
Actually, it's not really HTML, because the <name> tag and the <date> tag don't exist in HTML. All HTML processors (browsers as well as pdfHTML) ignore those tags and treat their content as if the tag was a <span>:
It doesn't make much sense to have such tags in the context of pure HTML, but it does make a lot of sense in the case of pdfHTML. With pdfHTMLL, you can configure custom tags, and have a result that looks like the PDFs shown below:
Look at the document for "John Doe" and compare it with the document for "Bruno Lowagie". The name "John Doe" is much shorter than my name, hence more words fit on that first line. The text flows nicely (we could also have chosen to justify the text on both sides). This "flow" is impossible to achieve with your approach, because you will never get a PDF template to reflow nicely.
OK, I get it, you probably say, but what about the practical aspects? You talk about a Java / .Net library, but I am working with Laravel and Angular.js. First, let me tell you that I don't think you'll find any good PDF tools for Laravel or Angular.js, because of the nature of PDF and those development environments (in my opinion, those technologies don't play well together). Regardless of my opinion, this shouldn't be much of a problem for you because you work in an Amazon environment. AWS supports Java, and the Java code needed to get pdfHTML working is minimal. Most of the code samples I wrote for the pdfHTML tutorial are shorter than 15 lines. So why not try Java and pdfHTML?
If you're already using Amazon services, why not use an amazon lambda function, in combination with iText7 (java), to generate the pdf on demand?
That way, you are guaranteed that the pdf is correct, and has nice layout every time.
Generating the pdf can either be done by:
converting HTML,
programmatically creating your entire document,
filling and flattening an XFA form.
I think for your use-case, either option 1 or 2 are the most sustainable.

Composite C1: how to make the page editor to display the source code by default

When you start editing a page, the editor is initially in the Visual mode, so every time you have to switch it to the Source mode if you prefer html-level editing as usually programmers do.
It is annoying when you have a lot of things to do during the day, especially when there is a bunch of languages every page is translated to.
I haven't found any option in the CMS and no solution in Google.
Actually I found myself the way to change this, so I post this question in order to instantly answer it. Maybe this will help somebody.
Edit file VisualEditorPageBinding.js, which is located in /Composite/content/misc/editors/visualeditor/bindings.
There is function VisualEditorPageBinding.prototype.initializeComponent.
Simply add this line at the very end of the function:
this.switchEditingMode();

Grails 3 "show" view with Fields plugin 2.1.0-SNAPSHOT

Stuck at a trivial problem in Grails 3.1.5: Show the fields of a domain object, excluding one of them, including a transient property. Yes, this is my first Grails 3 project after many years with previous versions.
The generated show.gsp contains
<f:display bean="rfaPdffile"/>
This will include a field that may contain megabytes of XML. It should never be shown interactively. The display: false constraint is no longer in the docs, and seems to be silenty ignored.
Next I tried explicitly naming the fields:
<f:with bean="rfaPdffile">
<f:display property='fileName'/>
<f:display property='pageCount'/>
...
</f:with>
This version suprisingly displays the values without any markup whatsoever. Changing display to field,
<f:with bean="rfaPdffile">
<f:field property='fileName'/>
<f:field property='pageCount'/>
...
</f:with>
sort of works, but shows editable values. So does f:all.
In addition I tried adding other attributes to f:display: properties (like in f:table), except (like in f:all). I note in passing that those two attributes have different syntax for similar purposes.
In the Field plugin docs my use case is explicitly mentioned as a design goal. I must have missed something obvious.
My aim is to quickly throw together a prototype gui, postponing the details until later. Clues are greatly appreciated
If I understood you correctly, you want to have all bean properties included in the gsp but the one with the "megabytes of XML" should not be displayed to the user?
If that is the case you can do:
f:with bean="beanName"
f:field property="firstPropertyName"
f:field property="secondPropertyName"
And the one you don't wish to display:
g:hiddenField name="propertyName" value="${beanName.propertyName?}"
f:with
So list all the properties as f:field or f:display and put the one you don't wish to display in a g:hiddenField Grails tag
You can also try:
f:field property="propertyName"
widget-hidden="true"
but the Label is not hidden in this case.
Hope it helps
My own answer: "use the force, read the source". The f:display tag has two rather obvious bugs. I will submit a pull request as soon as I can.
Bugs aside, the documentation does not mention that the plugin may pick up the "scaffold" static property from the domain, if it has one. Its value should be a map. Its "exclude" key may define a list of property names (List of String) to be excluded. This probably works already for the "f:all" tag; bug correction is needed for the "f:display" tag.
My subjective impression is that the fields plugin is in a tight spot. It is intertwined with the Grails architecture, making it sensitive to changes in Grails internals. It is also required by the standard scaffolding plugin, making it very visible. Thus it needs constant attention from maintainers, a position not to be envied. Even now conventions for default constraints seem to have changed somewhere between Grails 3.0.9 and 3.1.7.
Performance of the fields plugin is sensitive to the total number of plugins in the app where it is used. It searches all plugins dynamically for templates.
For the wish list I would prefer stricter tag naming. The main tags should be verbs. There are two main actions, show and edit. For each action there are two main variants, single bean or multiple beans.
My answer is that at present (2 March 2017) there is no answer. I have searched the Net high and low. For the index (list) and create and edit views, the fields plugin works well enough. A certain field can be easily excluded from the create and edit views, relatively easily from the list view (by listing those that should show), and in no way I could find from the show view. This is such a common need that one would suspect it will be addressed soon. Also, easily showing derived values in the show view, like 'total' for an invoice. One can do that by adding an ordered list with a list item showing the value below the generated ordered list of values, but that is kind of a hack.
In some ways, the old way was easier. Yes, it generated long views, but they were generated and didn't have to be done by the programmer - just custom touches here and there.

How to add a custom field into template.php using Zen sub theme

First time poster here, I'm a designer not skilled at all with php and I have a small issue I don't seem to be able to solve. I'm making a site in drupal 7 using a sub theme on zen.
Btw this is a great CMS, even though people say it's really more a developers CMS. I have no trouble to do what I need using views, rules, display suite etc. So a big thank you for all the developers out there making this such a good CMS. But for this apparently simple problem... no module will help me (I think) and I'm kinda stuck.
So here it is: I'd like to add a subtitle next to the title in all my pages.
So what I did was to add a custom field into the content type basic page (machine name: field_sub_title) which is a simple text field.
I uncommented the following line in my template.php
function mytheme_preprocess_page(&$variables, $hook) {
$variables['sub_title'] = t('field_sub_title');
}
Now my question is how do I load the content of my custom field into that variable?
I know i need to change the second part, but I don't have a clue as into what I need to change this.
Displaying the variable into the the page.tpl.php is something I know about so I only need help with the first part.
{EDIT}
Ok I found how to do this :)
I was looking for a solution in the wrong place. I don't need to change any thing in the template.php file.
Just needed to add this bit of code into my page.tpl.php:
<?php
print $node->field_sub_title['und'][0]['value'];
?>
So I'm posting this here for other Drupal newbies struggling with this....
Your solution may work for now, but there may be a more Drupal-y way to handle a problem like this. If you haven't noticed any problems yet, you may find one or more of the following issues down the road:
Someone who doesn't know php or Drupal theming may need to change the way this works.
If you're like me, you may forget where exactly in code this was implemented.
You may see superfluous markup and/or errors on nodes (content) that do not have this sub-title field (ie. event content not having a sub-title field while basic pages and news articles do).
When you add a field to a content type, it will automatically appear anytime content in that content type is displayed. You should be able to add the sub-title field for your page, event or whatever else you need and have it automatically appear in the markup.
You can 'manage display' of a content type to drag and drop the order for fields to appear. You could take it a step further by using a module like Display Suite to add formatting or layout per-content type.
If you feel like this isn't good enough and the markup for the subtitle must be at the same level as the page title (which is rare), at least add an if statement to make your code check to see if the variable is present before trying to print it. I'd also add a new variable and comments for code readability.
<?php
$subtitle = $node->field_sub_title['und'][0]['value'];
if($subtitle){
print $subtitle;
}
?>
Consider using field_get_items or field_view_value, or at least use the LANGUAGE_NONE constant instead of 'und'
See https://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/modules%21field%21field.module/function/field_get_items/7 and https://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/modules!field!field.module/function/field_view_value/7
This has the added benefit of reducing the number of potential security holes you create.

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