[wp-hackers] Programmatic Widget Handling

[Moya, Eddie]

On 10/20/10 2:06 PM, "Jeremy Clarke" <jer at simianuprising.com> wrote:

I might have been confused because that is something that is easy to do with
the existing api:

Thing is, as I said, what I have is basically a really simple api, what is needed is an interface. So that this can b done without needing to write a new custom_widgets_init each time, and without hardcoding widget names. Of course, since what I have does not have a GUI yet, yes it basically mimics part of what your describing. The intent has always been to add an interface to this though that has no hard-coded widget names.



If someone can edit a sidebar then having widgets that they can't edit will
mean there are parts of the sidebar that they can't change. This seems
pretty user-unfriendly to me, and I don't even want to start thinking
through all the logic you'd need to handle to make it work well.

Agreed, the logical mayhem I ran into just trying to come up with a plan of action for this is the reason I "scrapped it" as I said before. Still, it seems that some way of limiting access to a widgets based on users capabilities would be a very valuable addition. The way this might be handled or accomplished is obviously up in the air. Nonetheless, its not a leap of crazy logic to say that it would be useful to have users with ABC capability be able to edit Sidebar_X, but not have access to Some_Important_Widget, while still giving that access to certain other users.

As far as it not being user-friendly, that all depends on presentation of course and making sure there isnt unexpected background behavior going on. I envision a locked widget might just be permanently collapsed, undraggable, and have a little padlock on it to indicate its been locked. Easier said than done though.



I'd tend to think that you should instead limit Widgets/Sidebars access to those you can
trust with the content of the sidebar.

Are you saying there is a way to do this already? If not an alternative to the aforementioned - this would be a great feature  of its own. Something like this combined with what I listed as #2 - the ability to add contraints to a widget in terms of which sidebars it can/cant be used with - might together solve some of what is needed for #3. However, this would not be ideal, since it would leave the entire affair dependant on the number of sidebars built into a theme - rather than just giving admins the ability to control access to widgets directly.


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Eddie Moya
Applications Developer
Tribune Technology