Coherent Inc. Contact Database & Admin Tool

Description

Loren Miller
www.coherent.com/
Mar. 2018 – Jun. 2018

Coherent required a new system of managing their vendors displayed on their contact page. When they initially asked Universal Programming LLC to work on the project it was thought to be a simple form to modify the current JSON file that held the data. By the end of the project a complex system of databases had beed developed by myself and one other developer. This tool could now store complex html blocks into the database and read them back into a viewable format by the website and our tool to be modified.

Contact Selector

This package was originally developed for use with an Expression Engine 2.0 system, however it is fully contained and only requires a few simple changes to be made in order to have proper functionality in any server environment.

Files

Verify that the structure matches the below before using this tool.

Structure

maps_updater
                            |   mcp.maps_updater.php
                            |   mod.maps_updater.php
                            |   README
                            |   upd.maps_updater.php
                            |   
                            +---contact_selector
                            |       contact_selector.html
                            |       handle_contact_selector.php
                            |       regions.js
                            |       selectize.css
                            |       selectize.js
                            |       
                            +---css
                            |   |   bootstrap.css
                            |   |   selectize.css
                            |   |   style.css
                            |   |   trumbowyg.css
                            |   |   
                            |   \---ui
                            |           FhHRx.gif
                            |           icons.svg
                            |           
                            +---javascript
                            |       bootstrap.js
                            |       jquery.js
                            |       scripts.js
                            |       selectize.js
                            |       trumbowyg.js
                            |       
                            +---language
                            |   \---english
                            |           maps_updater_lang.php
                            |           
                            \---views
                                    attributes.php
                                    index.php
                                    location_inc.php
                                    mapdata-read.php
                                    points_inc.php
                                    providers_inc.php
                                    publish.php
                                    regions.js
                                    settings_inc.php
                                    updateLocation.php
                                    updatePoints.php
                                    updateProviders.php
                                    updateSettings.php
                                    _wrapper.php

Required for Expression Engine:

mcp.maps_updater.php
mod.maps_updater.php
upd.maps_updater.php

Usage

Anything you need to know about using this tool can be found in this section.

Config

Every variable needed by initialization is present in the file. This includes access to the database, paths to place files as well as variables used within the tool itself.

Customization

You can customize the front-end visuals by opening the template /contact_selector/contact_selector.html and changing the CSS in the <style> tags. If you change this file in the module folder, maps_updater/, it will publish the changes to the set path in .

Initialization

Lets get things started!

Admin Tool((Back-end):

When using Expression Engine all you need to do is copy the folder maps_updater/ into Expression Engines’ /third_party/ modules folder, install the module and open it. This will move all the files to the correct locations assuming the paths are correctly set in .
For everything else, place the maps_updater/ folder within your CMS secured folders to prevent access from unauthorized individuals, and open the file /views/index.php and uncomment the two comment blocks marked as

// Uncomment the following for use outside Expression Engine

then run /views/index.php to start using the tool. Like before assuming the paths are correctly set in it will move the files to the correct locations and work as intended.

Contact Selector(Front-end):

When using Expression Engine embed the template where you would like it to display with the following code:{embed="includes/contact_selector"}.
This embed code is setup to allow 5 different parameters which allow you to customize the output of the contacts, these parameters are case sensitive.

... allow_region="true" ...}
... selection_type="All" ...}

All three of the following must be present to work correctly.

... selection_location="United States" ...}
... selection_category="Category 1" ...}
... selection_product="Product 1" ...}

Example of all 5

{embed="includes/contact_selector" selection_type="All" allow_region="false" selection_location="United States" selection_category="Category 1" selection_product="Product 1"}

For everything else, the conditions above are all defined at the top of the /contact_selector/contact_selector.html file and need to be set for the tool to work correctly.