Thread

Firstly, I apologise if this is answered else where. I did a search but I’m not 100% sure what I am looking for to begin with so I thought best to just ask.

I’m currently building an EE website for a music artist. They will obvisouly have a music section that lists their discography.

So far I have created a weblog for this called ‘music’. This has various fields, e.g. release date, CD cover (done with a relationship to a gallery), etc. What I now need to add is the ability to list all the tracks for the CD.

Each track has to have a couple of pieces of information associated with it so I can’t ask them to simply type a list into a text field. What I essentially need to do is have a mini weblog for the tracks within the weblog entry for the CD.

Is this actually doable and/or the best method of achieving what I want?

Thanks.

I’d use Mark Huot’s multi text extension. It’s a fiddle to implement, but works pretty well.

http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/39153/

If I’m reading this correctly then the weblog you currently have set up is for each CD entry, yes?

If so you then want to have the CD tracks listed for each entry then the way I would do it is by using a separate weblog called ‘tracks’ or something like that which would hold all the tracks to all CDs. You would then use a multi-relationship field, probably Playa as it is a real snap to use and has some nice powerful features and then you can just select multiple tracks of the CD from the ‘tracks’ weblog from within your main CD entries weblog.

This way you can then have as much or as little information stored for each track that you wish. The Multi-Text extension is great but I believe that it would be better suited to something where you might not have a massive amount of text as each field in that shows up as a text field and I don’t recall being able to make them into text-areas so if you have a lot of text for a description (anything over say 20 words) then it might start to get a little difficult to see what you are doing.

Not putting down Multi-Text though as it is a fantastic extension in its own right but I think that perhaps a multi-relationship field might be a better way to go on this one as it offers much more in the way of flexibility and upgrade-ability in the future if you decide that you want more fields for each track or perhaps an image for each and so on and so forth.

Hope that helps.

Best wishes,

Mark

I think this is a bit of a failing with EE - Almost every site I build has the need for an entry to have an number of sub-elements associated with it. I think it’s fine to create a separate blog entry and associate it, but it’s a little convoluted for most clients.

The other problem is that you end up with a large number of [track] entries and no easy way of telling which is associated with which [album] entry, without going into the [album] entry to check.

I think this is a bit of a failing with EE - Almost every site I build has the need for an entry to have an number of sub-elements associated with it. I think it’s fine to create a separate blog entry and associate it, but it’s a little convoluted for most clients.

Myself personally when I have used this method for clients they have always applauded it just for its sheer simplicity. I think it’s a really nice way to do things myself but I do see your point entirely.

The other problem is that you end up with a large number of [track] entries and no easy way of telling which is associated with which [album] entry, without going into the [album] entry to check.

You could cheat by having a custom field in the ‘tracks’ weblog whereby you simply choose the album that it belongs to either as a relationship field or a drop-down menu if you aren’t going to be adding to the ‘albums’ entries too much 😉

Best wishes,

Mark

...but wouldn’t it be nice to have a little + symbol and just add a new sub item within a publish page for an entry? That way you can have (for example) any number of images and titles associated with an entry.

...but wouldn’t it be nice to have a little + symbol and just add a new sub item within a publish page for an entry? That way you can have (for example) any number of images and titles associated with an entry.

Yep I totally agree that the Multi-Text extension is great and I use it all the time but for something like tracks on a CD where you might want a description, image and perhaps even the lyrics then Multi-Text gets a little limited in what it can do. Also you need to make sure that you always put the same information into the same field location every time or you will get things spat out in your templates in the wrong place.

Also using multi-text there is no easy way (that I know of) of getting an image into one of the fields. You would literally have to type in the name which could be cause for concern on the errors front. With a separate weblog you could use the File extension and get rid of any errors at all on that front.

I usually use it for when I need tabular type data as then creating a table with the data is very easy indeed but if I have something like this where I may in the future need more data or possibly even in the present need more data than can be physically seen in the Multi-Text fields then I would always go the relationship route myself.

Just the way I do it though. Both have their merits and pit-falls but for something like this I would go the relationship route as it offers more in the way of customisation, less prone to errors (You must always have something in each multi-text field or it all goes haywire) and easier to see what you are doing.

Just me though 😊 😉

Best wishes,

Mark

yeah, I agree. I tried using it for image fields and came unstuck.

One of these days I must try an work out that the gallery module is all about 😊

One of these days I must try an work out that the gallery module is all about 😊

To tell the truth that’s another one I always do without 😉

I find there’s just so much more power in doing it yourself with a weblog that I just don’t use the Gallery Module, period.

Just me again though 😊

Best wishes,

Mark

That Playa looks good, I’ll try it out now.

I’m usually a very hands on developer and the closest I’ve ever come to working with pre-built content management is the Symfony framework.

Working with an actual CMS like EE is hard for me as I’m use to doing things by hand and in a different way.

I’m learning slowly but surely though.

Worked a treat! Thank you so much for your help.

No problem at all.

Hope it goes well for you.

Best wishes,

Mark

I think this would have been much more straightforward with reverse relationships, but that’s just me.  Each track is only ever going to be on one album, so you have only one relationship field, easy to manage.

voice of sanity

I think this would have been much more straightforward with reverse relationships, but that’s just me.  Each track is only ever going to be on one album, so you have only one relationship field, easy to manage.

Actually I must confess that I meant to mention that, well I did sort of touch on it with the tracks being related to the Album instead but I had already gone down the route I had gone down so apologies for that!

Best wishes,

Mark