Custom Wizard Plugin

[bletch]

Hi @angus, I’ve extended the Custom Wizard Plugin with some dynamic (runtime) content functionality. I’m maintaining this on a fork at the moment and wanted to know if you’d be happy to take it into your master repo.

What does it do?

It allows the Wizard to present content to the user that is generated at runtime.

How does it do it?

I allow the developer to register a custom content code block which is called when the wizard is built and before being presented to the user.

I’ve followed your model of registering a step handler add_step_handler and instead allow the user to register an add_dynamic_content code block. This is called in the steps method in wizard.rb as the wizard is being built and the changed content is then presented to the user.

What is the use case?

I found myself using the same dropdown options across 6 wizards and when those dropdown options change - as they do, I needed to modify all 6 wizards. These dropdown options are also keys into other data structures so making a mistake in rekeying any of it would cause downstream issues.

What could be improved?

At the moment the dynamic content block manipulates the data structures inside the Wizard directly. i.e. I change a list within a hash inside the wizard. It would be far better to build those data structures with some higher level methods add_step_data, replace_step_data, add_dropdown_option, remove_dropdown_option, etc. It might be that I can use or lean on your existing UI code to do that.

Risks and why you might not want this in your repo

Well, if you can manipulate the data structures inside the core code then things can go bang (very loudly!) and it might add to your support issues.
If you decide you need to change the structures inside the core code then it gives everyone a headache if they’ve added dynamic content
It might also inhibit you from making such significant internal changes due to fear of regression failures

Happy to maintain this in a fork if you feel it’s not where you want to go.

Dan

[Sean_Strycker]

@angus thank you, that would be excellent! I’d rather use your generic version than my “hack”

[angus]

@bletch Interesting!

I’d be happy to merge something similar to this, and I’m interested to see your code. Just a few notes:

• The place to add a new hook of this sort would be in the builder.rb, rather than wizard.rb, like the step_handler hook.

• There’s an existing add_wizard class method on the CustomWizard::Wizard class which could perhaps be used to achieve the same goal. You could do any runtime overrides using this. I use this in some (non-released) plugins to generate wizards from a .json file I’ve included in a plugin. I find it easier to just change this file than use the admin UI. e.g.

  CustomWizard::Wizard.add_wizard(File.read(File.join(
    Rails.root, 'plugins', 'civically-place', 'config', 'wizards', 'neighbourhood_petition.json'
  )))
  

neighbourhood_petition.json

{
  "id": "neighbourhood_petition",
  "name": "Neighbourhood Petition",
  "save_submissions": true,
  "theme":"Civically Wizards",
  "steps": [
    {
      "id": "intro",
      "key": "neighbourhood_petition.intro",
      "fields": [
        {
          "id": "tip",
          "type": "text-only",
          "image": "/images/emoji/twitter/adult/4.png",
          "key": "neighbourhood_petition.intro.tip"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "location",
      "key": "neighbourhood_petition.location",
      "fields": [
        {
          "id": "location",
          "type": "location",
          "required": true
        },
        {
          "id": "tip",
          "type": "text-only",
          "image": "/images/emoji/twitter/adult/4.png",
          "key": "neighbourhood_petition.location.tip"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "topic",
      "key": "neighbourhood_petition.topic",
      "fields": [
        {
          "id": "post",
          "type": "prefilled-composer",
          "key": "neighbourhood_petition.topic.post",
          "required": true,
          "min_length": 20
        },
        {
          "id": "prompt",
          "type": "text-only",
          "key": "neighbourhood_petition.topic.prompt"
        },
        {
          "id": "tip",
          "type": "text-only",
          "image": "/images/emoji/twitter/adult/4.png",
          "key": "neighbourhood_petition.topic.tip"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "submit",
      "key": "neighbourhood_petition.submit",
      "fields": [
        {
          "id": "tip",
          "type": "text-only",
          "image": "/images/emoji/twitter/adult/4.png",
          "key": "neighbourhood_petition.submit.tip"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Make a PR and we can take it from there?

@angus thank you, that would be excellent! I’d rather use your generic version than my “hack”

I’ve slotted it in: Custom Wizard: make nested properties available in wizard template interpolation - Work - Angus' Sandbox

[angus]

There’s still a goofy bug in the wizard actions section with the action dropdown (defaulted to Create Topic) where you have to select the Create Topic action again for the fields to show up. Otherwise, the wizard errors when trying to create since those fields are undefined though not visible.

This should address this, from a usability perspective at least:

add none placeholder for action types

I started receiving complaints that people could not click the link of the wizard to go to next step (or exit the wizard), which was related to some CSS issue that I thought @angus had already solved some time ago. So I decided to remove the wizard since I could not find an option to disable it. But then it seems to have not cleanly removed itself since users who could not pass the wizard now get:

But of course I cannot fix it since the wizard is gone. I’m going to try and remove the plugin from the build, but I fear it’s in the database, telling Discourse to redirect the user who did not yet fill the custom required field (in this case to check the box that accepts the terms of service).

This is now addressed (cc @hellekin)

ensure wizard exists before forcing redirect

[bletch]

Thanks for the pointers @angus.

I’ll take a look at your recommendations, rework my code accordingly and will then submit a pull request.

I’ve never done one before so I might need to hand-holding nearer the time.

Cheers!

Dan.

[Nrsinga_Dasa]

Hello Team

Is there a way to allow the continuation button to only show at the end of the post. I have seen a post where the terms are shown and it is quite long but buttons are at the end.

[angus]

Hey, thanks for the report. I’ve pushed a fix for the text overflow issue.

css tweak