Elsewhere...
More and more of OpinionJournal goes behind the paywall. Personally I think it’s the right move, because what’s there to lose? If we won’t pay, the business was over anyway. And my bet is we will.
Macworld Expo 2010 Best of Show.
Russell Beattie: What we really wanted was a MacPad not an iPad.
Sikuli, ingenious GUI scripting. Definitely going to try it.
This video of a tablet mockup makes me horny at last for a tablet computer. I’m excited for tomorrow’s Apple announcement. Guess I’ll be standing in line to buy one as well.
A Little Less Conversation, says Joel Spolsy.
Fake Steve Jobs pens the most insightful piece I’ve read on Google’s complaints vis-a-vis China.
Hypercritical by John Siracusa, or, The Tao of Editing.
A test of input device speed for a 221-word passage.
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As ExpressionEngine becomes more deeply embedded in organizations’ business processes, there’s more of a need to integrate it with other systems. The External Entries plugin makes this easy.
The plugin enables you to update, insert into, select and delete from tables either within your EE database or any other MySQL database on the internet to which you have administrative access. This means your site can easily import and export data to and from EE and among the backends of any number of other MySQL-based systems.
External Entries costs $25 per EE installation and is free to try before you buy. It works in both EE v1.x and v2.x.
And if you don’t need all the plugin’s power, its four functions are available individually as Update Entries ($15), Insert Entries ($15), Select Entries ($10) and Delete Entries ($5).
External Entries v1 license owners: As a thank-you for being early adopters, you can upgrade to v2 for $10, a saving of $5 over the regular $25 price. Otherwise, if you don’t need the update and insert functionality, please download the Select Entries plugin and begin using that instead, as that plugin has replaced External Entries v1. See the Select Entries docs for the slight syntax changes.
Sun 17 Jan ’10
1:11pm
Adam Khan
Adrienne, the license is per EE installation, so if you’re using MSM or another multiple-domain method, you need only buy one license. I’ve updated the license agreement to include this. Thanks for forcing the clarification.
Mon 15 Feb ’10
8:02pm
dumbguy
Just curious - the trial version is not encoded. So how does the licensing work? Just on Trust that people who downloaded will come back and pay you?
Mon 15 Feb ’10
8:16pm
Adam Khan
Yes, Trust with a capital T. The setup may change at some point but for now payment is on the honor system. EE itself works like that once you’ve bought your first copy.
Mon 15 Feb ’10
8:19pm
dumbguy
great… :)
okay, i downloaded the plugin, but how do I install it? I am using EE2, but it doesnt show up in CP, I have uploaded it in thirdparty folder…
Mon 15 Feb ’10
9:33pm
Adam Khan
Plugins in EE2 need to be in a folder inside /third_party, so it needs to be /third_party/external_entries/pi.external_entries.php
Wed 17 Feb ’10
12:38am
Ben
Will this work with a PHP 4.3 and MySQL 4.0 environment?
Wed 17 Feb ’10
5:35am
Adam Khan
Ben, I don’t know, my guess would be yes. I’d appreciate your giving it a try in that environment and posting the result here.
Sun 21 Feb ’10
10:35am
Brendon Carr
Has anyone given this a try as a means to update just a part of a single entry (i.e., to make a leaner Stand-Alone Edit Form)?
Sun 21 Feb ’10
11:38am
Adam Khan
Brendon, you’ve anticipated the next release, External SAEF…
Wed 24 Feb ’10
5:05am
Lewis Jones
Hi Adam, Very much looking forward to the EE2.0 version of External SAEF. Related to Brendon’s question, it seems to me the Update Entries function is designed to update just one column of the table. Shouldn’t this work for an edit form already? Anyway, about to give it a try!
Wed 24 Feb ’10
9:04am
Adam Khan
Lewis,
> it seems to me the Update Entries function is designed to update just one column of the table.
Update Entries can update one, some or all the columns in a table.
> Shouldn’t this work for an edit form already?
Not sure what you mean here. By edit form do you mean the built-in EE saef tag?
Wed 24 Feb ’10
9:36am
2ways
Hmmm… yes, not sure what I meant either. I was thinking about the built-in SAEF tag, but realise now it won’t work the way I thought it would.
Could you use it in a two-stage process, where you used a regular form to post information to another page (almost like a preview page, but it would never need to be visible), then take the output of the form values from there to use in the update tags to update the database? Would require php, but would still be more flexible than the built-in SAEF for editing.
Anyway, just musing. In all likelihood, I’ll be waiting for your super-duper EE2.0 External SAEF module. Any time frame on that? Thanks.
Wed 24 Feb ’10
9:44am
Adam Khan
Yes, you can definitely do the 2-stage process with the form going to a template that then does the updating using Update Entries or External Entries’s Update function. It would just need PHP to grab the $_POST values, not a big deal. But then you’re using a $15 plugin to do the job of a $0 module!
External SAEF for EE2.0: shouldn’t be too madly difficult, I’ll try to get on that today since you ask so kindly.
Wed 24 Feb ’10
12:12pm
2ways
Hey, you’re the one setting the pricing! I’ll pay just about anything for a stand alone edit form that works.
The site I’m building is all about trying to keep users on the front end and away from the control panel.
The two-stage solution sounds pretty reasonable, actually. It also means radio buttons and checkboxes would behave more consistently than they do with the SAEF.
The next issue to tackle is a SAEF file upload plugin that works and formatting buttons for SAEF forms. I know they are supposed to work, but I can’t seem to get them to.
Sorry for the off-topic rant. Thanks for the comments.
Wed 24 Feb ’10
1:46pm
Adam Khan
Just wondering—what is the drawback of the first-party SAEF if what you’re wanting to manage is actual weblog content of the current site? Are there aspects of it that don’t work? I was aware of the file upload difficulties but didn’t know of any others. Isn’t the file upload issue solved with the SAEF Enctype (http://expressionengine.com/forums/viewthread/122306) extension?
Wed 24 Feb ’10
2:39pm
2ways
Thanks, Adam. To be honest, I gave up a while back and can’t remember the exact errors that were troubling me, though I might have another go now.
I know other people seem to think the issues were solved, but I just couldn’t get the file uploads to work or formatting buttons to appear at all.
On the edit side of things, the SAEF has trouble with just about everything other than text and textarea fields. I managed to get radio buttons working with an if-then check to see what to display and I did an ugly fix of the select boxes by appending the currently selected value at the top of the list. Checkboxes appear to be a lost cause for editing because they only appear in the data stream when they are ticked, which means if you untick it, it won’t tell anyone it’s been unticked.
The file upload doesn’t seem to have any chance of working with an edit form in the current configuration. By working, I mean being able to view what you’ve uploaded (other than a file path), deleting the current file, and uploading another.
Part of my problem is that I am on EE2.0 where the SAEF stuff is not as well tried in the community, so less forum traffic. Also, I am hardcoding everything instead of using {custom_fields} because I want to have control over the styling. Mind you, I went back to have a go using {custom_fields} and found I still couldn’t get it working.
Thanks for pointing me to that thread. Still don’t know how it all works with EE2.0. Sorry for the long reply.
Wed 24 Feb ’10
3:01pm
Adam Khan
Aha, v2.0, say no more (*4)! I can’t really speak to it, I only have it installed in one place just to test plugins against on a simple template.
(I’m not using 2.0 mainly because I can’t stand the cpanel design. But that’s another rant…)
At any rate, I’ve used SAEFs for this sort of thing before and not had these problems. Good—well, useful—to know that there are issues with this on v2.
Wed 24 Feb ’10
5:17pm
Adam Khan
Lewis/2Ways,
I left it a bit late today to start to EE2 port for External SAEF. Will go at it tomorrow morning.
Wed 3 Mar ’10
10:27am
Adam Khan
Lewis/2Ways,
Sorry, I haven’t gotten to the EE2 port for External SAEF. Since it’s a module not a plugin I need to learn some new stuff for that, and haven’t had the time yet.
Wed 3 Mar ’10
10:45am
2ways
No problem. Don’t stress on my account. Will enjoy it when it comes!
Oh yeah. Call me Lewis. I never really like being someone else online, and I didn’t realise my posts would all be from 2ways.
Thanks for your work.
Fri 8 Jan ’10
10:27am
Adrienne L. Travis
I keep harping on this point with extension developers, and you may have seen it, so I’m sorry in advance if so: is the license fee *per EE installation* (backend) or *per front-end site* (if using MSM or other multiple-domain method)?
Thanks!