List element heading label from data

[johnonorvic]

I am trying to create a list to display a table of data, basing it on an SQL view. There are many data fields, far too many to display in a sensible number of columns, so the view will select a small set, controlled by other data; the list will have as many elements as the view selects. Each column needs a title that indicates which data has been selected (available with the selection data), rather the a label fixed in that element’s definition.

So far I have not found a way of doing this, though I suspect that using PHP code to modify $listModel may be a possibility. Since Fabrik can do most things, but it is easy to miss something, I wonder if anyone might have a good suggestion.

 

[troester]

I'm not sure if I got your exact setup.

But I assume you can create a custom list template and modify default_headings.php

 

[johnonorvic]

I could create a custom list template, but I do not think that would help.

The problem is that each column contains information related to a particular date, which I want to appear as the column heading. A date is entered (not the date of entry) and is stored in the database when each set of column data is entered, so I need a way of getting the date of each selected column (of the many available) from the database and into the list’s column headings.

 

[troester]

So all data (including the date(s)) is somewhere in the database and you know how to select it?

Then you can do such a selection in default_headings.php
https://fabrikar.com/forums/index.php?wiki/php-common-tasks

 

[johnonorvic]

I know (I think!) how to select, in the view, the rows and columns to be displayed, controlled by other data that the view can read from the database.

Also I can see that I could change the default headings to any fixed values using a custom default_headings.php, but probably not to values that depend on data that has to be fetched from the database with some PHP code – or is it actually possible to do that?

Looking at list.php (which I spent too long getting a bit familiar with when investigating an earlier problem), during list rendering the labels are set by a call to addLabels from getData/finesseData before the onLoadData event is run. Might onLoadData in the php_events plugin be a good place to put code to get the list’s data and make the changes to it that I want?

 

[troester]

or is it actually possible to do that?

Yes. In default_headings.php just fetch what you need (see https://fabrikar.com/forums/index.php?wiki/php-common-tasks for how to) and put the result into the <tr class="fabrik___heading"> part.
You can use a loop to echo something like $your-result[some-index] (instead of $heading)
or "hardcode"
<th>...</th>
<th>...</th>
...

 

[johnonorvic]

Thanks. That seems straightforward; I already have standard functions for fetching data. I was a bit doubtful about putting a lot of code in a template (I do not really know why), but if you say it is OK then it is OK. Thanks again for your help.