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JLeague Integration with CB |
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Well .. another blog entry that has NOTHING to do with mapping. As my son's baseball season is starting to get near, I've had to start preparing my JLeague extension to support some of the new requirements for the league. After a great 2007 season with JLeague, I started to look at how to make the extension (and the league site) more valuable to the players, teams and even the parents. I ultimately came to the conclusion that the approach I should take is to leverage the numerous plugins provided by Community Builder (CB) and integrate JLeague with CB. After all ... the team table is really nothing more than .. guess what, a TABLE. However, integration wasn't enough as I needed to differentiate between a TEAM profile and a COACH profile, FAN profile and for that fact, a SPONSOR profile (see the potential -- selling ad space for a sponsor profile that eventually lands on a team/coach/fan profile ... hmmmm!) . So not only was integration a requirement, but also requiring the use of the APC (CB Advance Profile Control) extension I've been working on. That extension will then enable me to develop packages and policies that I can assign to specific profile types to limit functionality as appropriate. So, since my APC component (for the most part) is done, but still very much beta, all I needed to do was integrate with JLeague. After only a couple of hours of work, I was successful in completing my integration between CB and JLeague. Below is an example of the team profile page (based on a patTemplate I use with my APC component): 
Now my league solution can utilize all of the fine plugins for CB, filter access to given CB tabs based on the profile type, enable teams to have their own photo galleries on their profile as well as team specific documents. Not to mention the ever important schedule. Team specific record history, head-to-head statistics and game history are now all developed using the CB tab framework. There is still some additional testing needed but as of right now, it is all coming together. CB provides a solution that provides greater functionality for me without having to right too much code.  Be first to comment this article | Views: 498
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Community Builder Profile Control |
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Happy New Year to everyone!Well, I wasn't really sure what to blog about so I thought I'd mention some of my recent activity on an extension I'm building for a project that controls the display of a CB profile. One of the requirements we have is the need to differentiate between profile types. Each type requires different layouts (more than what CB offers today), conditional display of CB plugin content based on type, as well as different fields that are required upon registration. After looking to see if there was anything available, I didn't find anything that was able to satisfy my needs. I did find one component that looked to be exactly what I'd need but it was encrypted and would require a 3rd party component to be intalled to run the encrypted code. So I figured I'd write something myself and see how it evolves. The first part was to figure out how to display different CB fields on the registration page based on the profile type. That didn't take long and quickly built that mambot. That was the easy part. The hardest part was how to enable an unlimited number of profile display styles that is driven by the user's profile type WITHOUT hacking the core CB code. The less invasive code the better. Well ... after thinking on this for a while, I finally figured out how to do it. Now I have a working example (on my local boxes) where I can map a specific CB plugin (and its output) to a given tag that can then be used within an HTML document. I'm using patTemplate templating engine as I do within GMaps. I can then create templates with these tags, placed in different locations based on the template and profile type, that users can select from (again based on their type). I am starting to think that I need to update my league management extension to focus around profiles that I can then create different types for teams, a league, an organization or for that matter, even a player. I think the possibilities are endless to be honest. Oh well ... I'm rambling on. That all said, and after my intial coding, the guys from Joomlapolis will probably build the same thing and all of this would be for not. However, in the end, it has been interesting to look under the covers at the CB code. I always welcome the opportunity to learn something new. Comments (2) | Views: 745 |
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Submitting a marker from the front-end in GMapsPRO |
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One of more common emails I've received over the past few months is whether or not users can submit a marker from the front-end of a Joomla site. Well, it is now a lot closer to becoming a reality. I have spent a few hours doing some work on this and it is now nearly complete. The only oustanding portion to develop is the "approval" process on the back-end of Joomla. Anyway, this blog is written to provide some insight into how it will work. Each map can be defined to grant insert authority to Registered, Author, Editor and PUblisher user groups. These users will then have the authority to insert markers on that specific map. Now, front-end editting may be turned off for the entire component via the component configuration. As of right now, that is on a component level only and may be moved to the map level. Now, when one of the authorized user groups visits a map (through the components viewmap.html) template, a new icon will be avialable one the tool bar to submit a new marker (See the screens below). When they click on the icon, they will then be taken to one page that enables them to enter the marker details, location and select the specific categories. Yes, the marker locator is available on the front-end so there is no need for them to know the lat/long ... just the mailing address. The address can be geocoded by entering the value to geocode and then clicking on the appropriate button. Once the marker is submitted, it will then be stored in the database in an "unapproved" and "unpublished" state. It will be the administrators responsibility on the backend to go in, review the marker submission and then change its state. Once it has been approved and published, it will then appear on the map. It is this approval process that still needs to be developed. The hope is to have this wrapped up within a week or so. If you (subscriber or not) would like to be a beta tester for this build (once it is ready), please email me at
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I am looking for only about 3 people to help.      
Comments (1) | Views: 598 |
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Using GPX file as a GMaps datasource |
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NOTE: Adapters are currently not available to registered users or subscribers. We have not determined if/when/how they will be made available. Now that I have the adapter work for pro mostly complete, I decided to take it out for a test drive using something other than Community Builder. A recent subscriber had contacted me to see about whether or not GMaps could support taking a GPX (see http://www.topografix.com/gpx_for_users.asp for more info on GPX) file and plot it on a GMaps map. This particular request had caught my attention primarily because it sounded interesting and allowed me to see how the adapter code would support a non-database driven datasource. Now, that may mean more code refactoring for me but what the heck. Anyway, below is a screen image of the test map I produced with this adapter. The adapter does really nothing more than parse the GPX file, obtains the latitude/longitude values and constructs a polyline object based on the GMaps object model (which continues to be refined). GMapsPRO uses both the markers from the GMaps database as well as the adapter when it renders the map. In fact, you can even combined that will a KML file from Google MyMaps. That may make it a bit cluttered though depending on the objective. Now, for those hiking/biking enthusiasts who use Joomla and GMaps, the potential is there that you can use an adapter like this, or write your own, to pull in your favorite hiking trail and plot markers on the map for specific landmarks. 
Comments (3) | Views: 649 |
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Over the past few weeks, several individuals have posted comments on the forums having issues with installing GMaps on Joomla 1.5. Well, I have released a "beta" version of the standard GMaps build that should install properly on 1.5. I have tested it using Joomla 1.5 RC2. I am waiting to finalize the build so that I can receive some feedback from people to ensure all possible compatibility issues have been resolved. This is only supported in legacy mode. As for the pro build, I have also updated the code base for 'pro' and it too should be compatible in 1.5 legacy mode once I release it. I have delayed releasing this build as I am trying to clean the code up and finalize the adapter work. I hope to have this build released to subscribers as a beta within the next week (after the Thanksgiving Day holiday). Comments (1) | Views: 1194 |
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