MOT
Administration Help

The 'Detail Sort Options' options determines whether the sort options table is displayed for all of the sub tables in the detail view. For instance, setting the 'Detail Sort Options' to yes for the Users database makes MOT display the table of sorting options after the listing of the Permissions table in the detail view of the Users table. Setting this option to 'link' displays a link at the bottom of each sub table that leads to a version of the same page with the sorting options tables displayed.

The 'Help Text' option allows you to write custom documentation for each database. The help text for the database will appear as the 'Overview' section on the 'Help' page when viewing the database.

The 'Name Field' option allows you to create a custom name field for a table in MOT-SQL. It is always safe just to leave this field blank.

Each table has a name field, which is the field is used to represent that table when it is linked against other tables. For instance, the name field of the Users table is the Name field, so the Users field of the Permissions table displays the name of the user linked by that field. By default, the name field is simply the field with the lowest 'Display Order' option. If you leave the 'Name Field' option blank, MOT will use this default. So, in nearly all cases, you can simply leave this option blank.

However, in a few cases, it is very handy to be able to either specify a different field than the default or to have the name field be some combination of other fields. For example, in a People table, you may have Last Name and First Name fields so that the table will properly sort the entries by Last Name. However, neither the Last Name or First Name field would serve well as a name field in this case. What you would really want would be First Name + Last Name as the name field. The Name Field option allows you to specify this behavior by writing the correct MOT-SQL phrase. In this case, the phrase would be: concat({People}.[First Name], ' ', {People}.[Last Name]) (see the help section on MOT-SQL for information on how to form MOT-SQL queries).

The 'Help Text' option allows you to write custom documentation for each table. The help text for the table will appear on the 'Help' page in any database to which this table belongs.

The 'Type' whether the field will hold a piece of data or a link and, if it is a piece of data, what sort of data it will hold. A field may be any one of the following types:

• date - A date field represents a day in the format of 'YYYY-MM-DD'.

• time - A time field represents a time of the day, in the format of 'HH:MM:SS (A|M)P'.

• datetime - A datetime field represents a day and a time of the day, in the format of 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (A|P)M'.

• short_string - A short_string field is a string of up to 32 characters.

• medium_string - A medium_string field is a string of up to 128 characters.

• long_string - A long_string field is a string of up to 65535 characters. A long_string field cannnot be used to sort or restrict its table.

• password - A password field is like a short_string field, with two exceptions: 1) MOT stores an MD5 hash of the string entered by the user instead of the string itself, and 2) MOT will mask any such entries, so that they cannot be read on the screen.

• short_int - A short_int field is an integer between -32768 and 32767.

• medium_int - A medium_int field is an integer between -8388608 and 8388607.

• long_int - A long_int field is an integer between -2147483648 and 2147483647.

• float - A float field is a floating point number with a range of -3.402823466E+38F - -1.175494351E-38, 0, -1.175494351E-38 - 3.402823466E+38F.

• boolean - A boolean field can equal either 'yes' or 'no'.

• url - A url field is a url of up to 128 characters. A url field is always displayed as a link to the given url.

• email - An email field is an email address of up to 128 characters. An email field is always displayed as a mailto: link handy for sending email with a click.

• link - A link field is a link to another table. Note that a field cannot be changed from a link to another field type or vice versa.

• table - A table field is a link to a MOT table. It is mainly useful for the Permissions table, but resourceful users might find other uses for it.

• database - A database field is a link to a MOT database. It is mainly useful for the Permissions table, but resourceful users might find other uses for it.

The 'Sort Order' option determines the order in which the rows of the table are sorted by default. Tables entries are sorted according to the fields with the lower sort orders first.

The 'Sort Order' option is ignored if the 'Sort by' option is set to no. In other words, only fields marked as 'Sort by' are used to sort the table.

The 'Display Order' option determines the order in which the fields are displayed. Fields with lower display order values are displayed first.

The 'Sort by' option determines two things: 1) whether the field should be used to sort the table by default (whether MOt should pay attention to the 'Sort Order' option) and 2) whether the user should have the option of sorting the table by this field first (whether the field appears on the 'Sort by' list of the sort options box.

The 'Restrict by' option determines whether the user will be able to restrict the table to certain rows depending on the value of this field. In other words, this option determins whether this field has its own line in the sort options table.

if the 'Default Restrict' option is not blank, MOT will ony display entries in which the value of the field in question is equal to the value of this option. Note that setting a value for the 'Default Restrict' option while also setting the 'Restrict by' option to 'no' has the effect of locking the user into a restricted set of fields, since she will not be able to change the restriction.

The 'Blanks' option determines whether the given field can contain a blank value.

The 'List View' field determines whether the field in question will appear in the list view of its table.

The 'Detail View' field determines whether the field in question will appear in the detail view of its table.

The 'Add View' field determines whether the field in question will appear in the add entry screen of its table.

The 'Modify View' field determines whether the field in question will appear in the modify entry screen of its table.

The 'Single Link' option is only relevant for link fields (fields with a type of 'link'). A single link field is limited to a single link to its linked table.

The 'Table' option determines which table this field belongs to. Normally, you can ignore this option, since it is automagically set to the current table by default.

The 'Link to' option is only relevant for link fields. The 'Link to' option determines which table this field links to.

The 'Help Text' option allows you to write custom documentation for each field. The help text for the table will appear on the 'Help' page underneath the appropriate table in any database to which the table belongs.

The 'Action Name' option is mainly just used for identification purposes. However, it is also as the link text for list and detail triggers (see below).

The 'Function Name' option tells MOT which function to run when the action is triggered. The function should be declared in the following form:

Function function_name($action_type, $when, $table_id, $row_id) { ... }

The 'File Name' options tells MOT in which file it can find the specified function. To find the correct file, MOT looks in the actions/ subdirectory for a file named [File Name].php3. So if an action has a 'File Name' option of job_tracker, MOT looks for the function in a file called 'actions/job_tracker.php3'.

To prevent different databases from bumping into one another, I recommend that you put all of the actions for a given database in a file named after your database (i.e. actions for the 'Job Tracker' database should go in the job_tracker.php3 file).

The 'Timing' option determines when the action will be run, in relation to the trigger. For instance, an action with a timing of 'before' and a trigger of 'add' will be run before each addition to the table.

See the 'Trigger' option documentation for further notes on the effect of the 'Timing' option.

The 'Trigger' options determines what even will trigger the action. Each trigger type corresponds to a different MOT screen (add, modify, delete, list, detail). An action can perform different functions depending on its trigger type and timing:

• For add, modify, and delete triggers, the actions is always after the user has submitted the reuqested change. The timing determines whether the action fires before or after the requested change actually goes through. For these triggers, an action that fires before the event and returns a value of 'false' will prevent the specified action from happening. For example, there is a 'Protect Admin' action that fires before additions and modification to the Users table and prevents an addition or modification from happening if a non-admin is trying to give himself admin privileges.

• For list and detail triggers, you should only assign before triggers. If the before trigger returns true, then a link, bearing the name of the trigger, will appear at the top of the page in question. Clicking on that link will fire off the same trigger as an after trigger. For example, the 'Job Tracker' database contains a close_job action on the the detail view. When triggered with a timing of before, this action returns true if the given entry has a 'Close Date' equal to zero (meaning that the job has not yet been closed). When triggered with a timing of after, the action sets the current entry 'Close Date' field to the current time.

The 'Table' option determines which table the action is attached to. You can normally ignore this option, since it will be set to the current table by default.

There are a number of useful php function you should know about if you are going to build your own action scripts:

action_get_new_vals($table_id) { ... }

Get an array containing the values to be submitted to the database. This function is only relevant for actions triggered before additions or modifications.

action_publish_field($table_id, $field_name, $new_val) { ... }

Change the submission value of field $field_name in table $table_id to $new_val. Note that this function only has an effect on the database if the function is triggered before the addition or modification. If you want to change a value in the database at any other time, you will have to use a mot-sql query.

action_publish_all_fields($table_id, $new_vals)

Replace the list of values to be submitted to the database with $new_vals. This function is usually best used in conjuction with the action_get_new_vals.

mot_query($query) { ... }

Perform a MOT-SQL query. See the MOT-SQL documentation below for more details. To access the results of the query, use the sql_* commands (sql_fetchrow, sql_fetcharray, etc) found in sql.php3.

sql_date($time) { ... }

Return $time (as returned by the php time() function) in a format suitable to be inserted into a sql database.

The Query Tag is used to run custom MOT-SQL queries. Typically, it is used to insert data into a newly create database. The format of the tag is

<query text="MOT-SQL query text"></query>

<query text="insert into {Users} ({Users}.[Name], {Users}.[Password], {Users}.[Admin], {Users}.[Guest]) values ('Admin', '21232f297a57a5a743894a0e4a801fc3', 1, 0)"></query>

<query text="insert into {Users} ({Users}.[Name], {Users}.[Password], {Users}.[Admin], {Users}.[Guest]) values ('Guest', 'd41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e', 0, 1)"></query>

Note that queries are always run after all of the database, table, field, and action tags are processed.