Loop Field Type

[viruthagiri]

Description modified September 1st, 2015 and July 4th, 2022 by @sc0ttkclark

Feature Summary

A loop field will be a field that contains other fields. For example a Pod called 'book' could have a loop field called 'chapters', which had its own set of fields such as, 'chapter_title', 'chapter_content', 'chapter_start_page' and 'chapter_end_page'. An item in the book Pod, could have as many entires in the chapters field as necessary, and each one would have its own set of fields, with their own values.

A lot of planning has gone into this feature, but its implementation has been delayed. Performance improvements that we plan to address in 2.3.19 and 3.0 have been prioritized over loop fields as they are essential for proper implementation of loop fields.

Work to be done (needs to be revisited)

• Design Loop Field workflows (@curtismchale)
• Mockup Loop Field workflows (@curtismchale)
• Develop prototype, minus JS for fields (@curtismchale)
• Refactor and clean up CMB2 structures to support nested fields (@pglewis, @sc0ttkclark)
• Refactor and clean up field type JS for group fields to support better nesting (@jtsternberg, @sc0ttkclark)
• Test and finish up saving process and storage handling for table/meta storage types (@sc0ttkclark)
• Test and finish up field() / display() for getting data out of loop field (@sc0ttkclark)
• Add field traversal for loop field data arrays (@sc0ttkclark)
• Create Unit tests (@pglewis, @sc0ttkclark)
• Write Documentation page (@Shelob9)

We are actively seeking contributors for any of the open tasks above, please hop in and help out if you're interested! If you are unsure of how to get started or have any questions, feel free to ask @sc0ttkclark here or at http://pods.io/chat/) for help getting started.

Original issue summary

Hello pods team,
I'm using magic fields 2.0 which contains features like "add another field" and "add another group" type of fields.
Yesterday one of my internet friend recommended pods 2.0. I tested it and i really love it. Magic fields 2.0 stores the data as metadata. I'll get performance issue. Thats why i would like to use pods 2.0. Pods satisfies me everything except that "add another field" and "add another group" type of field.

Here is the snapshot of what i'm asking
Before duplicating the field:
http://wiki.magicfields.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=v2_field_duplicate_post.jpg

After duplicating the field:
http://wiki.magicfields.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=v2_field_duplicate_complete.jpg

Before duplicating the group:
http://wiki.magicfields.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=v2_group_duplicate_post.jpg

After duplicating the group:
http://wiki.magicfields.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=v2_group_duplicate_remove.jpg

Does pods 2.x has that feature and as a pods newbie am i missing something?

[sc0ttkclark]

Yes this is planned for Pods 2.0, I wasn't sure if I could pull it off in time, so it may be pushed into 2.1

[viruthagiri]

Thanks. I would be very happy if you include that feature in Pods 2.0 :)

[sc0ttkclark]

Mike, this one is on you (further down already discussed priority list), let's look at Attachments (can provide you the code) for how we'll handle repeatable fields themselves. Admining of repeatable fields is going to get sticky, so we'll tackle that as a separate thing in the admin area.

[Pezzab]

Apologies for reviving this thread. Having started tinkering with Pods 2.0 beta in anger this is so far the only feature that I'm missing. Other than here I see it has been mentioned on the podsframework.org blog. I hope it is still on the roadmap somewhere.

Otherwise Pods 2.0 is unbelievably good. The flexibility and power has always been astounding - the additional ease the new UI in 2.0 adds to the mix knocks it out of the park :)

[sc0ttkclark]

Yeah, this is queued up for Pods 2.1, we've got @dontfeedthecode on it and he's already designing some pretty great looking screens.

[Pezzab]

Sweet, that'll another plugin I can wave bye bye to once it's implemented :)

[dandv]

Awesome feature, I'm interested in it too.

[sc0ttkclark]

Looking good so far!

[sc0ttkclark]

Unfortunately we have to push this one into 2.2, more details coming soon on the plans for this one. Not opposed to this landing for 2.1 but it doesn't look like there's enough time to implement now.

[roosterjm2k2]

I put off a project as long as I could waiting on this, so I guess its either the ugly magic fields interface, or paying for ACF ... (still, awesome work, and i'll be using pods later)

[sc0ttkclark]

Sorry Josh, we wish we could push it up, we'll try to get it done and in beta ASAP, just had a few things come up that made it too tough to ship it in time for 2.1

[Pezzab]

No worries - worth waiting for :)

[franz-josef-kaiser]

+1

[eccentricpixel]

Did this functionality make it into the latest commit?

[sc0ttkclark]

No, we adjusted the release schedule and instead of releasing 2.1.1 for bug fixes, we're releasing that as 2.2 as it includes additional features and enhancements. This is now slated for 2.3, still technically our next major release. It's nearly done in design, so we should start seeing pieces of it make it's way into the code in January.

[kelfy]

@kochhase You just waited a year but I've been waited many years. Look at the date of my first comment on this thread.
The only advantage of Pods is allow you to create advanced custom fields which let you to store in a seperate table instead of WP standard one. Other then that, ACF, Toolset, Custom Post Type UI..etc are doing great job.

[JoryHogeveen]

@kochhase @kelfy
ACF would be your best pick for now if you need loop fields (though it is a premium feature). I would not recommend Toolset though.
Also note that Pods and ACF work very well together. So for example you can use Pods as your base for all your objects (CPT's etc.) and basic fields and use ACF for some extra features for example.

[kelfy]

@JoryHogeveen That's what I do too. ACF+Pods almost for all my projects over the last 2 years

[quasel]

@kelfy Sorry that it took longer then any of us expected maybe you did read some of the reasons

Pod's already has some sort of "LOOP" it's just stored in an related CPT and we are adding an UI to make it simpler / more usefull and call it "flexible relationships" #3309 - you can test an "Alpha"

[szepeviktor]

As for mixing Toolset and ACF with Pods

Toolset's code quality is low, no better word for it.
ACF is a one man show.

Pods is an enterprise level plugin with tests.

[kochhase]

Toolset's code quality is was low. that was before Toolset 2.
Now its good for non php user and has fast devolpment for the future. There are more than 8 developer working for it.

[StaggerLeee]

With this nonchalant attitude you are making it difficult for other developers. How it is possible ACF has more third party addons than Pods ? How on earth.

[szepeviktor]

@StaggerLeee

Pods is an enterprise level plugin with tests.

That means it is used where stability is critical.
ACF's clients are - I think - non-technical people. They see only the screen.
I usually partly audit the plugins and contact the author also.

[StaggerLeee]

Maybe you did it difficult for yourself from beginning. Let us say this way. Why should you lose time on Repeater (Loop) field, Group addon, etc... Why not make it easy to third party developers to make it.
I know now is late, just chit-chat.

Something like ACF has for instance Table field as third party addon.
I dont know any third party addon extending Pods field types. Maybe there is but I missed it.

[quasel]

well this goes a bit offtopic - to answer you last Question - Pods is and was a more developer centric tool and has less of the shiny ui for the admin page. Regarding integrations it's all there for people to use, CIO, Gravity, iThemes, Easy Pods,... last week e.g we got contacted by AdminColumns Pro they are working to fully support pods including relationships.

And the beauty you can combine Plugins to get the best of both - after all Pod's is free and opensource and sponsored by well known players out of the WordPress Community!

[jimtrue]

This discussion is devolving into a bashing this plugin and a Pods vs ACF vs Types discussion. I'm not seeing anything posted towards moving the project or this phase of the project forward. Non-constructive criticism or comparisons don't really help anyone, they just become a discussion of 'why isn't this done yet?' and 'why haven't you done what this other plugin has done?' None of which are helpful or, again, move the project forward.

Sorry to come down with the 'ban' hammer, but if there is any more discussion that isn't constructive towards providing code contributions, code suggestions or actual support in the form of documentation, help to other users with workarounds (with examples) or donations to Friends of Pods so we can actually afford to hire additional developers to move the project forward, we will ask GitHub to remove your ability to comment on this project because you have become what the internet defines as a 'troll'.

This is an open source, free plugin with free support. Our driving focus has always been to provide a framework that provides a fairly painless entry into the the Custom Post Types, Fields and Taxonomy world of WordPress to take your content beyond just Posts and Pages. We also have a very stable back-end that allows for extremely powerful enterprise level solutions. Loop fields have 'on the back-end' been in Pods since version 2.0 since we support relationship fields natively between Post Types, WordPress Objects and Taxonomies both one to many and many-to-many. What we're missing is the UI to provide that simplicity in the back-end.

If you want to get involved in helping with that UI, provide code, download the feature branch (feature/2.7) and jump into the discussion in our Slack Chat on the #core channel. If you want to keep criticizing the project without providing actual, workable solutions, please step off of this discussion.

[StaggerLeee]

I know all of this. Difficult to say something without offending someone.
If whole WordPress is managed as Pods instead of 47.000 addons it would have maybe 5000 of them.
Does it mean WordPress core code is of low quality ?

---

For instance this is made yesterday. I dont know what you are doing, but maybe time to lift heads above code. I know it is high quality code, no need to repeat it.

[szepeviktor]

You may open a PR with:

#side-sortables .form-table tr.pods-field > th {
    width: 150px;
}

[sc0ttkclark]

We've got a separate process going on for responsive forms, so that's off topic.

Thanks for your patience so far, we're closer than ever before to a Loop Field Type with our work in Pods 2.7, which changes all of our form field types over to Backbone + Marionette JS. It's pretty cool stuff what @pglewis has managed to do with it so far.

I think it's best to temporarily lock this thread, that doesn't close it, but allows us to focus on completing the work needed for Pods 2.7 which is basically Loop Fields but with relational objects. I'll unlock the thread after 2.7 is released as this is taking time/resources away from what's most important (and echoing what Jim said): moving the project forward.

[sc0ttkclark]

Repeatable Fields (#1095) is in Pods 2.9, you can check out Pods 2.9 Beta 2 at https://github.com/pods-framework/pods/releases/tag/2.9.0-beta-2