Recreate/Override/Modify the Categories dropdown

davidnhutch

Hi,

I currently have these categories in the "Categories" dropdown when you create a new discussion:

Parent 1
  Child A
  Child B
  Child C
Parent 2
  Child D
  Child E

(Note that "Parent 1" and "Parent 2" are not selectable because I chose the appropriate setting in Dashboard. Only the children are selectable.)

Now, I'm writing a plugin and would like to be able to programmatically show only:

Parent 1
  Child A
  Child B
  Child C

...or...

Parent 2
  Child D
  Child E

...depending on some logic.

So, should I attempt to recreate the Categories box from scratch? But then I'll get the look but not the actual action of it. Or, can I somehow override the Categories dropdown? Or just programmatically delete the entries I don't want?

Thanks mucho!
David

R_J

In order to do this with php I think you would have to write a plugin with a function PostController_BeforeFormInputs_Handle ($Sender) that sets $Sender->ShowCategorySelector = false so that this code will not be executed:

      if ($this->ShowCategorySelector === TRUE) {
            echo '<div class="P">';
                echo '<div class="Category">';
                echo $this->Form->Label('Category', 'CategoryID'), ' ';
                echo $this->Form->CategoryDropDown('CategoryID', array('value' => $this->Category->CategoryID, 'IncludeNull' => true));
                echo '</div>';
            echo '</div>';
      }

(see applications/vanilla/views/post/discussion.php)
Then you can echo this code by yourself but delete the options from the CategoryDropDown before you echo it.

Otherwise you can insert javascript to the page and delete the OPTIONs from the SELECT on client side.

How you do it depends on a) the criteria you base your decision on and b) if your user might in worst case (no js) see a categories.

hgtonight

If you don't want people posting in these categories, don't give the permission to post to the members. Vanilla only shows categories a user can post to. No coding necessary.

As an aside, be sure to test your settings out as a normal member of your site as the original account created with vanilla is a "superadmin" that always has all permissions. This is to prevent you from locking your admin account out of the system.

davidnhutch

@hgtonight : Thanks for your thought, but the reason I want to do this is not to permanently disable certain users from posting in certain categories, but to do so on a transient basis - so it must be selected programmatically at page-load-time.

@R_J : Thanks! It works!!!!