Symphony.

Hello all.

I'm working on a site for a couple of friends now using beta rev. 4. They've requested a guestbook and I've been looking at a way to implement one for them using Symphony's different components. I've been studying the Save Comment events in order to learn how it works, but I feel as if I do not fully grasp it yet, how it works with the different sections and all that. That's why I would like to ask you for advice on how to set this guestbook up.

Basically, what I'm thinking is having a separate page with all the latest guestbook entries and a form to submit new ones. I'm guessing I'm gonna need a new event for this, and a new section for guestbook entries but that's as far as I come. The Save Comment event is a bit confusing for me at the moment. So if you were to create something similar, how would you structure it?

Thanks in advance!

/ Johan

Johan,

I think you're pretty much there.

It should be even simpler than the 'add comments' example, since your 'gusetbook entries' won't need to be linked to an article. Create a Guestbook Entry Section, then create an event for that Section. Use the example code on the new Event page to create your 'sign guestbook' form. That's it for the input part of the problem.

Displaying the guestbook is more straightforward task, pretty much the same as most Symphony setups: you have a Section of entries, and you only want certain entries displayed on certain Pages (or certain Pages with some url parameter). This will involve creating 1 or more datasources pulling from guestbook that are filtered however you want (by date, etc), Then attaching them to the appropriate Page.

All that is left is writing (and including onto the Page) the XSL templates that will output the entries.