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BlogSphere - Feature Request: Comput block contents from a lookup in another database


I'm currently using a modified version of FreeDom Blog, but I'd like to move to BlogSphere. There's a feature that I've put into FreeDom that I'd love to see in BlogSphere.

I populate my blogroll via a lookup to another database.
Actually, it's several lookups to views in my aggregator
database, resulting in separate blogrolls for Domino and
non-Domino bloggers. This is all very convenient, because
it gives me just one place to store all the URLs that I care
about. The lookup returns the HTML, which was formatted
in the view column, so the actual blog template doesn't
worry about the formatting of the block contents. It doesn't
know it is a blogroll. And in fact, I populate a couple of
additional blocks the same way.

Generalizing from that, what I want is the ability to populate
a block via a lookup to an external database. There are
plenty of things other than blogrolls that could be manged
that way. E.g., 'hot news', 'reading list', 'threads of interest
in other blogs', etc.

The great thing is that nobody has to mess with their blog
database design in order to get a completely custom block
type, so they can keep compatability with the vanilla template,
making upgrades to new versions much easier for people
like me who want to do heavy customization.

I hacked up FreeDom by putting hard-coded lookups right
into the subform that lays out all the blocks, but that's not the
way I'd want to do it in blogsphere. It would require changes
to the Block Definition form to define the new block type and
set up fields to configure the target database, view, key and
column for the lookup; and also modifications to the
BLOCKS_LEFT and BLOCKS_RIGHT views to include the
target information in columns. Also, the RIGHTBLOCKx and
LEFTBLOCKx subforms would all have to be modified to
add logic to the computed text formula so that if the block
type is "Lookup" it will retrieve the column data, do the lookup,
and spit out the HTML.

I'd like your opinion on this, and if it's something you'd want
to include in the next rev of the template I'd like guidance
as to how best to proceed to work with you to get the code
in.



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In this field owners can describe what they have done or want to do.

You can use the rich text editor for rich text formating. You can also enter HTML to embed objects, e.g. to embed a YouTube video or a screenshot of the project. In this case use '[' and ']' to mark the passthrough HTML as such.

Please note that the first time you use the new UI your description is converted from rich text to MIME. You might want to copy and paste the raw plain text from the old UI in the new UI so that you don't loose information.