[xwiki-devs] [Proposal] HomePage Application

  Hi devs, Problem ======= This week end I’ve had an idea that solves the following issue: - Make it easy for the user to be able to change his wiki's home page - Make it understandable when clicking “edit” on the home page Solution ========= At some point in the past, I moved the dashboard which was on the home page to the Dashboard space. My rationale at the time was: - if the user removes the home page then the user will still be able to navigate to the Dashboard by clicking on the “Dashboard” link in the Applications Panel - when editing the home page it’s “just” an Include Said differently, I considered that the home page can be configured to point to any app. This is what I’d like to push for and make it easy for the user to configure the home page so that it can point to any app. Implementation =============== - A HomePage.HomePageClass XClass with one “reference” field which is the reference to the document to include from the home page (the app to point to if you prefer) - A HomePage.HomePageSheet which is bound to the HomePage.HomePageClass - One instance of the HomePage.HomePageClass put in Main.WebHome so that when you click “edit” on the home page, HomePage.HomePageSheet is called and displays some instructions about changing the home page. Here’s an example:  https://www.evernote.com/shard/s119/sh/b682040d-6a09-4cfc-b6aa-1eab4b4d8d5e… Here’s the content of HomePageSheet (not finished, I still need to code the part that changes the “reference” property): {{velocity}} #if ($xcontext.action == 'edit')   #set ($previewenabled = 'false')   The content of this home page can be the content of any page you wish.   Right now it is displaying the content of the [[$doc.getValue('reference')>>$doc.getValue('reference')]] page.   In order to change it, click the "Use as Home Page" link in the table below for the page you wish to use as your new home page.   #set($collist = ['doc.name', 'doc.space', 'doc.date', 'doc.author', '_actions'])   #set($colprops = {     'doc.title' : { 'type' : 'text' , 'size' : 30, 'link' : 'view' },     'doc.fullName' : { 'type' : 'text' , 'size' : 30, 'link' : 'view' },     'doc.name' : { 'type' : 'text' , 'size' : 30, 'link' : 'view' },     'doc.space' : { 'type' : 'text', 'link' : 'space' },     'doc.date' : { 'type' : 'date' },     'doc.author' : { 'type' : 'text', 'link' : 'author' },     '_actions': { 'html': true, 'sortable': false, 'actions': ['Use'] }   })   #set($options = {      'translationPrefix' : 'platform.index.'   })   #livetable('documents' $collist $colprops $options) #else   ## If there's content don't use the default app   #if ($doc.content.trim().length() > 0)     $doc.content   #else      {{include reference="$doc.getValue('reference')" context="new"/}}   #end #end {{/velocity}} - Note that if the user forces the edition in wiki mode or WYSIWYG mode of the home page he gets an empty page and he can put content and when he saves his content is displayed! (this is achieved through the following portion of the script in HomePageSheet:   ## If there's content don't use the default app   #if ($doc.content.trim().length() > 0)     $doc.content   #else      {{include reference="$doc.getValue('reference')" context="new"/}}   #end - Also note that I’d like to propose to add the ability to configure the buttons to display in edit mode. ATM I think only the preview one can be hidden but we could do the same for all. In our case here we could decide to only leave the “Cancel” one active since clicking on “use” in the Livetable could set the page to include immediately. The other option is to use a different picker than the livetable and keep the save buttons. Any suggestion for this? The idea would be to package this as an HomePage Application in xwiki-platform and would be bundled by default in XE.  WDYT? Thanks -Vincent