Some (lengthy) thoughts on Express
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I have now used Express in a few places and I have some thoughts I wanted to share with the core team and also everyone. Full disclosure, I am NOT a software developer, I can get myself around PHP but really my focus is on design. Having said that I think there are some things about Express that I'm not seeing talked about too much and maybe that's because it is so new or that I'm one of the few pushing what it's capable of.
Two different projects I'll isolate from my experience so you have some background:
One is a fairly complex "books" database with multiple relationships to other objects to associate things like a "book series" and companions to those books called "fact checkers." This whole thing outputs on the front end with some custom blocks that provide extra search functionality. This one I think DEFINITELY is pushing the functionality of Express. For this project I worked with a developer because it was way out of my scope to output the search functionality but the back-end in the dashboard is ALL native express and "vanilla" attribute types.
Second, I'm just using it for testimonials in categories. It's a fairly simple usage of express I think. No real custom blocks other than a custom template per Andrew's Detail Block Boat/Marina tutorial for output.
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I'm going to preface by saying most of my feedback here is in regards to the dashboard views and management of express. I'm going to refer to the two areas you can manage express by calling them:
"system & settings express" = dashboard > system & settings > express > etc.
"main express dashboard" = dashboard > express
So on to it...
The main express dashboard for viewing/managing entries is kind of rough to work in. There is no way to search for entries when looking at an object and if your object has pages of entries it's a real bear to manage. Additionally, if you click into an entry to edit it and save, then you return to the entries the list shuffles for some reason so you lose your place if you plan on editing multiples. I can adjust what fields are seen here and what columns are sorted by in the system & settings express object options but there really needs to be at least a search field on the express > object page or at least make the intelligent search field in the edit ribbon also return entries perhaps?
Re-ordering entries is a nice feature in system & settings express but having to do it through that area is no good. I believe you should be able to re-order entries in the main express dashboard. Perhaps it's another button there that lets you get to the drag and drop view to re-order but it's a lot of clicks to go through system & settings and it's not intuitive. In my mind, if I want to manage entries in an object that includes the sort order, and I'd expect to find that under the main express dashboard.
Speaking of sort order, if I have an associative setup going on, for example, my simple testimonials usage... how am I supposed to sort my entries PER association?
Example:
I have 3 categories in a "Testimonials Categories" object: A, B and C.
One of my testimonials belongs in categories A and C. So I associate that testimonial to the two testimonial categories.
However, on output, on the "A" page I want it at the top of the list but on the "C" page I want it on the bottom.
How would I sort that when I have only ONE master sort order for ALL testimonials?
Therefore I think that in the main express dashboard when I click on the testimonial object and look at one of those entries where I can see the associating testimonials, I should be able to re-order them there as they associate to that category.
Which leads me to associations. I understand this thing is still young/new and I'm willing to accept that bugs will happen, however I have in both the complex use and simple usage found multiple times where I've made a one to one or many to one association with objects and have seen where it will make associations on one side but not the other. And sometimes if I uncheck/deselect the association it only unchecks/deselects it from one side. On the very complex books project it's actually not not making any one to many associations at all except on one side currently. I've reported the bug in git but I think it's one of those things that isn't easy to replicate so it didn't get any traction at all with the bug report. We're working through it now but I feel it's worth mentioning to the community at large here if you are planning on doing a fairly complex setup with multiple relationships, to really REALLY test it out before hand. Because although I did some tests before building anything and it all seemed to work I could never have been prepared for this behavior with associations. I didn't see any of it in any of the tests I did.
Bottom line here, I like Express, maybe I jumped in too soon and should have waited for it to mature but nothing matures unless people really use it so I rolled the dice. If I were a seasoned developer I would gladly jump into the core code and contribute on git to the feedback here but I'm not. I would basically be stumbling around in the dark. All I can provide here is my feedback and hope that others will see what I am seeing and hope that it eventually makes for a stronger product in the end. For what it's worth I love version 8 so far, it's really fantastic and I'm excited for the future of Concrete5.
Two different projects I'll isolate from my experience so you have some background:
One is a fairly complex "books" database with multiple relationships to other objects to associate things like a "book series" and companions to those books called "fact checkers." This whole thing outputs on the front end with some custom blocks that provide extra search functionality. This one I think DEFINITELY is pushing the functionality of Express. For this project I worked with a developer because it was way out of my scope to output the search functionality but the back-end in the dashboard is ALL native express and "vanilla" attribute types.
Second, I'm just using it for testimonials in categories. It's a fairly simple usage of express I think. No real custom blocks other than a custom template per Andrew's Detail Block Boat/Marina tutorial for output.
--
I'm going to preface by saying most of my feedback here is in regards to the dashboard views and management of express. I'm going to refer to the two areas you can manage express by calling them:
"system & settings express" = dashboard > system & settings > express > etc.
"main express dashboard" = dashboard > express
So on to it...
The main express dashboard for viewing/managing entries is kind of rough to work in. There is no way to search for entries when looking at an object and if your object has pages of entries it's a real bear to manage. Additionally, if you click into an entry to edit it and save, then you return to the entries the list shuffles for some reason so you lose your place if you plan on editing multiples. I can adjust what fields are seen here and what columns are sorted by in the system & settings express object options but there really needs to be at least a search field on the express > object page or at least make the intelligent search field in the edit ribbon also return entries perhaps?
Re-ordering entries is a nice feature in system & settings express but having to do it through that area is no good. I believe you should be able to re-order entries in the main express dashboard. Perhaps it's another button there that lets you get to the drag and drop view to re-order but it's a lot of clicks to go through system & settings and it's not intuitive. In my mind, if I want to manage entries in an object that includes the sort order, and I'd expect to find that under the main express dashboard.
Speaking of sort order, if I have an associative setup going on, for example, my simple testimonials usage... how am I supposed to sort my entries PER association?
Example:
I have 3 categories in a "Testimonials Categories" object: A, B and C.
One of my testimonials belongs in categories A and C. So I associate that testimonial to the two testimonial categories.
However, on output, on the "A" page I want it at the top of the list but on the "C" page I want it on the bottom.
How would I sort that when I have only ONE master sort order for ALL testimonials?
Therefore I think that in the main express dashboard when I click on the testimonial object and look at one of those entries where I can see the associating testimonials, I should be able to re-order them there as they associate to that category.
Which leads me to associations. I understand this thing is still young/new and I'm willing to accept that bugs will happen, however I have in both the complex use and simple usage found multiple times where I've made a one to one or many to one association with objects and have seen where it will make associations on one side but not the other. And sometimes if I uncheck/deselect the association it only unchecks/deselects it from one side. On the very complex books project it's actually not not making any one to many associations at all except on one side currently. I've reported the bug in git but I think it's one of those things that isn't easy to replicate so it didn't get any traction at all with the bug report. We're working through it now but I feel it's worth mentioning to the community at large here if you are planning on doing a fairly complex setup with multiple relationships, to really REALLY test it out before hand. Because although I did some tests before building anything and it all seemed to work I could never have been prepared for this behavior with associations. I didn't see any of it in any of the tests I did.
Bottom line here, I like Express, maybe I jumped in too soon and should have waited for it to mature but nothing matures unless people really use it so I rolled the dice. If I were a seasoned developer I would gladly jump into the core code and contribute on git to the feedback here but I'm not. I would basically be stumbling around in the dark. All I can provide here is my feedback and hope that others will see what I am seeing and hope that it eventually makes for a stronger product in the end. For what it's worth I love version 8 so far, it's really fantastic and I'm excited for the future of Concrete5.
Did you find a solution for the custom ordering by associations you described?
I have the exact same problem right now.
I am looking at setting up a new Express object which associates the two things as a one-to-one relationship, and then has an order column.
That means the user has to type in the order number (1, 2, 3, etc...). Kind of gross. For this particular project it will work but for anything else I would never do it that way.
Hoping you may have found a better way.
Thank you,
Greg