Bake yourself a complete admin backend - in one call

The code§

The code I am discussing here is available from the mi-development plugin. Be sure to read the release note.

What's in the new download?§

There are a few supporting files in the download - Bake templates themselves obviously have no dependencies, however the example code my templates generate do so they are included to hopefully demonstrate/inspire how to get the most out of custom templates and bake. So, the contents:

Tweaked tasks§

The controller task has been modified only to prevent the inclusion of the helpers var (with the included app controller file, no code at all is required in controllers by default), the view task has been modified to pass the schema data to the view template to allow some fine-tunning based on field types. There's a ticket requesting this change.

A layout§

Yeah how exciting :). A default admin layout is included in the download to allow the downloaded files to work out of the box.

JS and CSS files§

A small amount of jquery is used in displaying and hiding the filter form - there's also a default admin css included.

Tree Helper§

Although not strictly necessary the admin menu is generated via the Tree Helper.

Filtering element and controller logic§

This is the bit that I assume will get some interest and hope will stop "pagination and filtering" coming up on the google group.

Included in the previously released (v0.1) bake templates was the possibility to zero-in on data applying PRG style filters by clicking on the values in the table to limit the results for that column to a specific value. For small and evenly distributed result sets this works well; if you are looking at your blog listings and see the last 20 posts, which includes at least one post by each of John, Bob, and Gerald you can click on Bob's name to see the last 20 posts by Bob only. Then, if you want to see only posts in category "Boat" you click on category "Boat" and see the last 20 posts by Bob, in category Boat - and on you can go until your filter is as long as you like. However, what happens when you have massive datasets and complex filtering requirements - where filtering your result sets is not a nice-to-have but a necessity? How can you (or a user) easily apply a filter to find the 3 Widgets of type x, when there are thousands of entries in the database and none of them are in the initial index to be clicked upon? How do you find all posts for the months of January and February? Or all products more than 10$..?

Well, I guess the answer is obvious: a filter form. So in addition to the table-cell PRG style links for fine tuning if required, the new bake templates add a filter form to all index pages.

Wrapping Up§

Bake is awesome. Running bake and getting all admin views in a single console call is awesome-er, running bake and getting pretty much a fully working admin backend in a single call is still more awesome, making a db change, running bake and getting a fully functional admin backend with which you (typically) only need to comment out the few things you don't need to be done is awesome-est :). The results of the new bake templates may still need some tweaking so as I'm in agreement with [a previous commenter][Ego v benefit] this cake goodie goes out here on the blog.

Bake on!