Showcase Widget Renderers

[Ludachris]

Alright Bob, in light of recent events, I'm looking into the idea of building a Widget Page with a custom layout to list SC items and display custom SC fields (timeslip and dyno lists). I just need to figure out what is possible based on built-in functionality and what will require custom coding.

I believe I will need to have a custom renderer (or a few) created mainly because I'll need to specify a sorting method around a custom field. The Showcase: Items renderer would probably be used as a starting point and modified to sort by custom field. I figure I'll need a custom renderer for each sorting option and each filtered option.

Ideally the Widget Page would have the same Filter functionality that is found on the SC pages, but I realize that would require extensive custom coding, so what I'll likely try to do is create multiple widgets (using custom renderers) and group them by tabs, each tab being a filtered view based on different custom field criteria and sorting.

My thought was I could use the Custom View option and build out a template that uses XF tables, similar to the way Optima did with the Timeslips add-on he created. This way I can control the look and feel.

What I'm not sure about is getting the list to paginate. Can any of the built-in renderers paginate? Even if it just uses the SC items per page setting, that's all I'd need. If not I suppose I'll have to just make the page really long and limit to a number of items. Is there a point where the page load time would suffer due to the number of items being loaded?

Does all of this sound like a good path to go down? Since Optima isn't really maintaining his add-on, and since I already have all the custom fields his add-on creates and they're filled with data, I don't know that I really need to use his add-on anyway. I just need to find an efficient way to display that data on pages.

 

[Bob]

Can any of the built-in renderers paginate?

No. They would need to be modified to add in pagination (which would have to be custom as I'm not aware of a render that you could look at that has pagination that would give you an idea of how its implemented).

Is there a point where the page load time would suffer due to the number of items being loaded?

I am sure there is, but it depends on the amount of data in the results set and what the viewing users device is capable of handling.

Does all of this sound like a good path to go down?

To be blunt, no. My recommendation is to hire a developer to create you a Timeslips Addon that is integrated with Showcase.

 

[Ludachris]

Well alright then! I'll go back to the previous plan of using Optima's add-on and modifying it to work.