EXT: BZD Equipment¶

What does it do?¶

This extension will help your visitors / employees to get an overview of the available equipment. Basically I developed this extension for the school where I work. We are using it on our intranet. Our teachers can get answers to questions like “where is the next beamer?” or “what equipment ist available in room XY?”.

I saw other systems that manage every room as a database-record with many many fields like “Equipped with beamer YES/NO”. That's quite ok – but I thought it is unflexible. That's the reason why I wanted to have many tables (room-categories, floors, rooms, equipment-categories and finally one for the equipment itself). This way I can add a new machine-category without extending (changing) any existing table.

That's just the second extension I did – so don't be to hard to me if something is not as you expected. If you find something you think is a bug, a missing feature or anything else like this: feel free to contact me!

Also I would like to hear from you, if you use the extension somewhere. Feel free to send me links.

By the way: Thanks to my wife Kerstin. She accepts me as I am – also on these days when I hang around on the PC for hours spending time to program instead of beeing with her. Kerstin, I love you!

- mario

Screenshots¶

This shows the list of available rooms.

This shows the list of categories.

This is the detailed view of a single room. To the left, you see the information about this room. And to the right, the equipment found for this room ist output. Also a list of alternatives is shown (may be this room has no beamer, but there is another room of the same category that could have one).

This is the detailed view of an equipment-category. This is needed if you are looking for a printer and want to know, where the next printer can be found.

And finally this is a detailed view of a single item (equipment). To the left again you can see the details of this item. And to the right you get additional informations and a list of alternatives.

Credits¶

Thanks to Jürgen Kussmann for providing some code!

Steps to show your equipment on a page¶

Install this extension

Create a page on wich you want to show the extension-output

On that page: Create a Pagecontent and select the frontend Plugin of this extension.

You can create the records on the same page as the frontend Plugin is located. An alternative way is to create a new page of type “SysFolder” and store the new records there.

Go to the list-Module and create some records. I'd prefer the following order of creation (because you will assign equipment items to a room. And this works only if the room is already entered)

• Floors
• Room Categories
• Rooms
• Equipment Categories
• Equipment (the objects to list)

In the settings of the frontend Plugin: Select a source (starting point) from where the extension should get the records. You must select a source (even if the records are located on the same page).

Configure the template-file and the CSS-File (see chapter “Configuration”)

Take a look on the page – It should already work, and show your records. There is nothing else to configure (as far as I know).

Specifying the path to the HTML-File¶

There is nothing to be configured in the Extension-Manager – as long as you can live with my default HTML-Template. If you want to use your own, take these steps:

Copy the default Template-File from /typo3conf/ext/bzd_equipment/media/ to your own folder (for example to your fileadmin folder)

In the backend, go to the Extension Manager and click on the name of this extension

You will find just one field to configure. Change the path to your copy of the themplatefile

Do your changes on the copied file.

Hint: Don't change the original template-file! If you do so, you would loose all these changes after updating the extension from TER.

Specifying your CSS-File¶

By default this extension includes it's own CSS-File to define the look of the output. This happens by including the following default TypoScript Setting:

page.includeCSS.file2 = typo3conf/ext/bzd_equipment/media/bzd_equipment.css

You can ovverride this setting in your template. Enter something like

page.includeCSS.file2 = fileadmin/templates/main/bzd_equipment.css

Copy the given default CSS-File and change it at its new location. Don't change the original file in the extension-folder as all changes to this file will get lost by updating the extension from TER.

Hint: The defined File MUST exist! If it doesn't, the Link in the output will not be written (like there is no CSS-File defined).

Features / bigger changes¶

Program the View of a complete List (for a printed reference)

Little Bugs¶

These notices should be in the bugtracker - as long as there is no separate project started on mantis, I'll keep track of the bugs here in this document.

• CSS (Category List), a:visited is underlined, but shouldn't
• Backend: New equipment-record, Rooms are sorted by creation date /uid, should be sorted by room-number
• Create two separate HTML-Templates, one for English, one German. (actual file is mixed)