Symphony.

Hello Ladies and Gents. I need a bit of help and can’t seem to find the proper solution. We’d like to use symphony on a application that would be used internally at our company. But we’re hitting a snag. No Multi file upload on a section. I’ve scoured the forum but nothing seems to fit the bill exactly. Here’s what we’ve tried and the result/comment on it:

Mass Upload Utility This works great, but it kind of works backwards, in the sense that a user will need to know which section to upload to, so it adds more of a complexity to ease of use. But boy does it work well. This would have been the perfect solution if it could be added as a field to a section.

Field: Mediathek Really a great extension will probably use it personally. But the issue is usability. When a user uploads the file they need to make sure it is selected in order for the file(s) to be associated with the entry. I would have naturally thought it would have automatically been part of the entry. Also not such a huge problem, but it would be nice to upload multiple images or files.

Field: Bi Link This seems pretty ingenious. Created a section to host files/images and linked it to anther section that would create the entry and have the images associated with it. Unfortunately I got some odd php error that I will be reporting shortly about. thought this would have been the solution and possibly still could be.

It would be great to combine some of the functionality of these extensions to create a super multi upload extension. Unfortunately I don’t have that kind of knowledge and I’m really trying to make this as super easy for any user of the system. If anybody can point me in the the right direction I would really appreciate it. I really want this to shine in my workplace so we can start using Symphony on other projects.

Thanks and cheers, it’s been a long time.

If you can’t get the Bi-Link field working, I suggest the solid Select Box Link field that comes in the core. The Bi-Link just extends the functionality of this field a bit further. What it means is that you can create an Images section and each entry has a Select Box Link field (a drop down) to which you can select the parent/host entry in another section to which the image relates.

As far as I know the Mediathek field use the same sort of structure (a section link), but I’m not sure. I’m sure Nils would be glad to hear of any usability issues you’re having, since Mediathek seems to be becoming the most-used way of managing images.

This works great, but it kind of works backwards, in the sense that a user will need to know which section to upload to

What is your use-case? Sounds like you want a repository/pool of images to start with, then choose how to assign them to things at a later date? As you say, the existing solutions work the opposite way around — you create your “master” item first (whether it be a section to dump images, or a blog post, or whatever) and then assign images to it either with a Mediathek or Select Box Link field.

Can you be more specific about the user flow you’re after?

Field: Mediathek Really a great extension will probably use it personally. But the issue is usability. When a user uploads the file they need to make sure it is selected in order for the file(s) to be associated with the entry. I would have naturally thought it would have automatically been part of the entry. Also not such a huge problem, but it would be nice to upload multiple images or files.

Just a few notes: My Mediathek field should automatically add newly created entries to the list of selected items. If it does not, this is a bug.

Concerning multiple image upload: You just need to set up your media section with an upload field that allows multiple file upload. I think Nick once created such a field (javascript/flash based). If it’s working in your media section it should work inside Mediathek, too.

I think Nick once created such a field (javascript/flash based).

Alas, I did not. You might be thinking of the Uploadify extension (in beta) which adds an upload progress bar to a normal Upload field.

That’s what I’ve been thinking of.

Thanks guys for the feed back so far.

So my use case is simple, I have an entry section that a user will be able to upload assets to a project. So the required fields would be “project Name, Summary and related assets,which can range from images, html, psd, pdf etc….

I created a 2nd section that would contain the assets and was linking it into the entry section using bi-link.

This way the user can do everything from one page and not have to go hunting around to different Sections to upload and update/create new entries.

Nick as for the Bi-link extension I’ve added the bug to github, hopefully Rowan will see it, but this is what gets spit out when submitting an entry that is b-linked:

array (
  'entry_id' => 
  array (
    -1 => '24',
  ),
  'entry' => 
  array (
    -1 => 
    array (
      'name' => 
      array (
        'file' => '',
      ),
      'type' => 
      array (
        'file' => '',
      ),
      'tmp_name' => 
      array (
        'file' => '',
      ),
      'error' => 
      array (
        'file' => 4,
      ),
      'size' => 
      array (
        'file' => 0,
      ),
    ),
  ),
)

I really think bi-link is on to something if the upload field in the Asset section could somehow be the mass-uploader (multi file selection) it would be a winning combo for my particular case.

Hey Nils, indeed I’m running into a couple of issues, one of my own making and the other pre-existing. I’ll list them here But I’ll make sure to follow up on the mediathek discussion unless you prefer it on git hub.

So it seems after adding an image or item, in order for it to show up in the xml, that item needs to be selected in the edit tab. Otherwise it will not show up in the xml when viewing it in the debug mode. Not a huge issue, but at least on my end items aren’t automatically selected, hence not part of the xml, Seems counter intuitive and a very small hassle for the user.

The other issue which seems to be my doing, If you delete attached image or item say directly in the folder, Mediathek still thinks it exists, so under the created tab there are empty entries that are collapsed on itself. I think this is similar to Issue #11 on github.

So it seems after adding an image or item, in order for it to show up in the xml, that item needs to be selected in the edit tab.

Did you save the whole entry?

I’ll list them here But I’ll make sure to follow up on the mediathek discussion unless you prefer it on git hub.

If you are not sure if it’s a bug, this should be discussed in the related Mediathek thread.
If you are sure, you found a bug please post in on GitHub.

Nils, it seems I had a similar bug that was already reported and fixed. But it looks like a new issue popped up. I reported it on github.

So this brings me back to square one, with no easy to use multi upload field. I’ve tried Select Box Link field as Nick recommended, but that defeats the purpose of using a single section to input multiple files. Mediathek unfortunately doesn’t do multi upload.

I saw that scottkf was creating something along this line which I guess at this point it is the mass-upload-utility which is quite close to what is needed. Now if only it would be inline field I would be set. Is there anything else that can be done? Feel a bit lost at this point.

Thanks again for all your help.

My extension came about from this discussion, and yeah, that’s what I was looking for to manage larger galleries. I use it with Mediathek to manage galleries actually. I see the two of them as similar, but distinct as mine serves a specific purpose of mass-uploading, not management.

There’s no reason what I did couldn’t be put inline, within the next few weeks I can see how easy it’d be to do. Along those same lines it’d probably be just as easy to modify Nils’ extension to do the same to the point where it absorbs the mass upload utility. The problem with uploading multiple files, and why it isn’t included in symphony by default is, I assume, because of browser support, as mentioned here. To support all browsers, you need to use something flash-based like uploadify to allow it to happen on non-html5 compliant browsers.

Scott that would be kick ass! Having it inline would be just right! And if it was absorbed into Mediathek, well I think that would be awesome with a capital A.

Using flash as the stop gap for multi file upload is a workable situation. It’s not like most people would be using the cms in linx or something. Granted it’s not perfect but a workable solution. Hopefully the dev team will come out with something in the future, but I know they still have alot on teir large plate.

If you need me to alpha test the extension let me know. I’ll be more then happy to help.