Administration Interface Introduction

Andromeda provides an extensive administration interface to our databases, designed for use by regular non-technical users. In cases where you are doing an intranet, this may be the only interface you use.

There are three general ways you can affect the administration interface, which are:

Changes to DD.YAML File

There are a large number of settings in the DD.YAML file that affect the way the UI is handled. One of the most basic is the "uisearch" flag. When this is set to true, the designated column shows up in standard search results. So in this example the circled properties:

leads to this browse of search results, where of course the user can click the column headers to sort the results:

Another simple 'for-free' behavior is a drill-down into child tables, which gives 1:m forms with no coding. Consider the case of this table referencing its parent:

When examining a record in the parent table, we see a more detail link:

...and by clicking on the link we see only rows that match the parent:

Sometimes it is more desirable to see child table information directly. We can set a display property in the ADD file to do this, but we can also make the setting in PHP code:

You can put the display directly onto the parent table:

Additions To Default Screens

You can also add additional links to the normal admin pages. For instance, there is an Andromeda program called a "Node Manager" that you use to run the Andromeda builder. The page that displays applications has this additional code:

...which adds these links to the normal page:

Many other additions are possible, including the replacement in whole or in part of any part of the screen.

Creation of New Screens

Sometimes you need screens that are very different from the defaults, so that you can give people screens that are more natural to a task. One great example of this is scheduling tasks, which don't usually work well with conventional table maintenance screens. In this case you begin by defining a menu entry in the ADD file:

... and then creating a class to implement this entry:

...which will result in something that regular users will accept and use: