Old content (pages) concept tables

Fri
07/06/12

Now the tables...

[these are old tables created a while back and they do not correspond the current scheme]

The new scheme will use a similar set of data, but it uses namespaces to distinguish fields from the different plugins. So for example if the title of a page is called "name" and the content module handles the title, then it will be saved in column: "content::name".

Pages are a quite broad concept that is run first by the core of the system and also by additional plug ins that add functionality to the pages. To do so the system and users can create and edit their page types. A type is not specific to a plugins. Instead, as you create a new type, you can decide whether such and such plugin functionality will be available in the page type.

Page Type
Field Name	Plugin	Comments
name	core	The name of the type (page, blog, comment, ad, etc.)
description	core	Describe what this type is for.
help	core	Help on how to use this type when creating a new page or editing an existing page of this type.
plugins	core	List of the plugins used with this page type (i.e. title,content,filter,...)
trashcan_cleanup	core	How long does a page of this type stays in the trashcan before completely getting removed from the database. Can be set to forever.
path	path	The path to use to access these pages (i.e. journal/[yyyy][mm][dd]/[title])
short_path	path	The path used to access these pages using the short path of the parent pages (i.e. in a book)
short_cut	shortcut	The path defined for short cuts to this type (if undefined, no short cuts are created.)
revision_mode	moderation	How revisions are handled. The following are flags that determine how the revision behaves. Auto-publish - publish as soon as the moderation has passed; if no moderation, publish immediately; this only applies to the current branch Auto-create - always create a new revision; otherwise one can edit the last revision
revision_moderators	moderation	List of references to people who are expected to moderate these pages and whether said moderator must moderate a page or is an optional moderator. Moderators can add to the log if they cannot edit themselves.
revision_minimum	moderation	The minimum number of moderators who need to check a page before it can be published.
revision_count	core	Number of revisions to keep. Older ones get deleted automatically after that.
title_label	title	Label for the title field of the page. All pages need a title but it can be automatically generated so this field can be removed by the user.
content_label	content	Label for the textarea field used to edit the very content of a page.
teaser_mode	teaser	Whether a teaser is generated and if so how it is generated: none, machine, human, human required; and whether it is part of the content or a completely separate piece of code.
filter	filter	Defines a default filter.
required_log	log	Whether a log is required when: Writing a new revision Editing a revision Deleting a page
minimum_words	statistics	Force this minimum number of words in the content.
maximum_words	statistics	Force this maximum number of words in the content.
maximum_characters	statistics	Force the maximum number of characters so it can be used over micro-blogging system (i.e. 140 over twitter.)
minimum_title_length	statistics	Force this minimum number of characters in the title.
maximum_title_length	statistics	Force this maximum number of characters in the title.
broadcast	rss	Whether these pages are broadcasted on RSS feeds.
rss_description	rss	Description of this RSS feed (i.e. feed with only these pages, opposed to the website wide RSS feed.)
blog_pages	blog	Whether these pages make it to the blog roll.
spam_check	spam	Whether this type of pages need to be checked for spam. Pages that can be created by "anybody" should be scanned by the spam plugins.
newsletter	news	This is a newsletter. This is also used by the comment plugin for notifications of replies.
default_update_freq	xmlsitemap	The default amount to save in the update frequency of this page.

Categorization of a page is done using taxonomies. Taxonomies are themselves pages which are used by other page types to categorize their content. A taxonomy can be categories by another, but it is not possible to create a loop (i.e. taxonomy A categorize taxonomy B and vice versa.)

Page Type Categorization
Field Name	Plugin	Comments
taxonomy	taxonomy	The name of the page type used as a taxonomy.
type	taxonomy	The reference to the page type using this taxonomy.
auto_tagging	taxonomy	The algorithm used to automatically tag pages of this type.
minimum_tags	taxonomy	The minimum number of tags to assign to these pages.
maximum_tags	taxonomy	The maximum number of tags to assign to these pages.

The following are Page fields used to manage pages in this system:

Page
Field Name	Plugin	Comments
type	core	Determine the type of the page. This allows plugins to create their own types and add their own parameters to just those types. (reference to a Page Type)
created_on	core	Unix timestamp when this page was created.
status	core	The status of this page (flags): can_update - this page can be modified (edited) can_delete - this page can be deleted protected - this page cannot be viewed by all; a permission check is required blocked - this page is currently blocked; only administrators can access it deleted - this page was deleted; deleted pages are kept for a while before being cleaned up allowing an administrator to restore a page if necessary
last_modified_on	core	Unix timestamp when this page was last modified. Note that each revision has its own timestamp.
author	core	The reference to the user account representing the person who created this page. This field does not change when someone else edits the page (although it can be changed in case the person who created the page is not the actual author of the content.) In case of a comment, this is the name the user entered as is.
published_on	core	When this page is expected to be published. This date can be right now (i.e. published_on = created_on), it can be in the future, or it can be zero (unpublished.) This time should never be smaller than created_on unless it is set to 0.
unpublish_on	core	Some pages should automatically be hidden after a certain amount of time. This represents the time when the page will be unpublished. If this is zero (or undefined) then the page will not be unpublished automatically.
sent_on	news	The date and time this newsletter was sent to users. Since it takes time to send, this really only indicates the start date of the process.
branch	core	The current branch (integer.)
revision	core	The current revision (integer.)
layout	core	The layout used for this page
weight	core	The page weight used to order pages together (i.e. predefined order) In case of comments, the weight can be used along with a poll mechanism to get the best comment at the top of the list.
place_before	core	A reference to another page which is placed before this page. For comments this represents the previous comment (chronologically.) For books this represents the previous page.
place_after	core	A reference to another page which is placed after this page. For comments this represents the next comment. For books this represents the next page.
place_under	core	A reference to another page considered our parent. In case of a comment, this represents the comment being replied to (in case we support threaded comments.) For books this represents the page that includes this chapter.
place_over	core	A reference to another page considered our child (one to many or we point to the very first child and then can go through with place_after?) For books this represents the list of chapters appearing in this page.
show	rss	Whether the page shall appear in your RSS feed. True by default.
show	blog	True by default and thus shown in the blog roll, can be set to false to hide that specific entry (we could also look into change the page type)
sticky	blog	If true, show the message at the top of the list of blog posts.
email	user	Email attached to this user.
password	user	Encrypted user password. This field includes the hashing code if necessary for the password encryption.
failure_threshold	user	Number of log in attempts that failed. This value is decremented by 1 once a day. If it goes over a certain value, the user gets blocked.
access_on	user	Last time this user accessed the website while still logged in.
login_on	user	Last time this user logged in (i.e. "access_on - login_on" represents the amount of time the user spent on the site.)
timezone	user	The timezone the user is in.
picture	user	An avatar for a user account. The page type 'user' is reserved and locked. In this case the title of a 'user' page is the user name and the description his signature. The title is mandatory. The picture can also be used by comments (TBD--should we have a comment::picture field instead?)
email	comments	The email address of the user who posted this comment when the user is not logged in (i.e. anonymous posting.)
homepage	comments	A URL to the commenter website.
update_frequency	xmlsitemap	Defines how often a page is being updated (minutes, hours, days, months...)

A page comes with revision data (what is called "Its own content".) That data is saved in another table to allow for one to multiple reference.

Page Revision
Field Name	Plugin	Comments
created_on	core	When this revision was written.
editor	core	Reference to the person who wrote this revision (i.e. the editor.)
ip	core	The IP address when the user saved this revision.
branch	core	The branch of this revision (integer.)
revision	core	This revision number (integer.)
moderate	moderation	Whether this revision requires moderation. This is often true for comments. This can also be used with the spam module (i.e. if someone not so trusted posts something and the spam module thinks it's spam, turn on this flag.) The moderation module will compute when this flag can be turned off and thus the page published.
moderators	moderation	List of the people who moderated this revision.
translate	language	Whether this revision needs translations. Whenever the editor of a revision makes changes to a page, he has the choice to say that (1) it is an original, or (2) it is a translation. In case (1), all the revisions in other languages are marked as "need translation" (i.e. translate=1). In case (2), the translate flag is cleared since the editor just did translation work. (Permissions may permit the editor to do just one or the other...)
language	language	In which language this revision is written. In case of a user, this defines the preferred language of that user.
title	title	The title for this page (text, HTML...)
teaser	content	A teaser for this content. It may be automatically computed.
teaser_mode	content	How the teaser was generated (computer, human) and whether it needs to be shown before the content in full page mode or not.
content	content	The actual content (text, HTML...) Only editors reads this version to let the user make changes with his original.
filtered_content	content	The content after we applied the XSS, HTML, etc. filters. We double the size of this table by saving the filtered version, but we then need to filter only on Save() meaning that we save tons on processing time. Viewing uses this version only.
link	menu	Link to the destination of this menu item.
filter	filter	HTML Filter to avoid XSS attacks. If not present, the default is to filter as plain text.
small_title	news	Displayed in new lists (this is like a teaser title.) The small title could also be used by the menu as the menu label.
small_teaser	news	Displayed in RSS like lists of news. The small teaser could also be used by the menu as the menu title.

By default, pages written by users are given a title used to define a URL to access the page. The path is defined using the path system (and possibly other plug-ins such as the shortcut and canon path plug-ins.) The path defines the following table to save all the paths together. Since one page may have multiple paths, this is separate from the page table. The table is indexed on the path so we can immediately find which signal to send to which plug-in.

Note that paths that are directly linked to a plug-in, such as the /robots.txt path, get assigned a function that is called to generate the content of said page. When a plug-ins is first installed, its database installation function is called which adds its path to the database (i.e. the robotstxt plug-in adds the /robots.txt path and its generation function.)

Later, when a hit is received from the HTTP server, the path plug-in determines which path was entered in the browser, redirects when necessary, and finally finds the corresponding plug-in function and calls it.

Paths
Field Name	Plugins	Comments
url	path	The path to the page. This path is also the index in this table so when a user accesses the website he can directly be sent to the proper processing function. We can have different paths defined for the same page: long path, short path, shortcut, and user defined redirects.
plugin	path	The name of the plug-in responsible for this path (useful to find all redirects or all shortcuts)
function	path	A fully qualified function name referencing the function of the responsible plug-in this path.
page	core	A reference to the page this URL points to.

Page revisions accept logs (internal comments) that the editor and moderators can enter as they see fit. The log is useful to track the changes down.

Log
Field Name	Plugins	Comments
reference	log	Reference to the object being discussed in this log. The log can be used for page revisions, pages, etc. although we may not offer them as such at first.
author	log	Reference to the user writing the log.
created_on	log	Time when the log entry was entered.
log	log	The actual log entry. Only text accepted.

Each page can be categorized by assigning tags to it. The taxonomy plugin makes sure the minimum and maximum defined for each category is respected. The minimum and maximum definitions and the number of tags determines how the user is asked to enter said tags. The following table is attached to each specific page revision.

Categorization is used to attach a comment to a page! The page being commented is the tag that the comment receives, categorizing that comment to that page.

Problem: In the page content in language A the user write the word Foo. This is also a tag so that tag gets assigned to that revision in language A. Someone wants to visit the page in language B. The word Foo is most generally translated Blah. Therefore the tag in question in language B should show Blah as one of the tags. Unfortunately, in this very language B revision, the word Blah doesn't apply. Instead we need the word Bar. One way to palliate to this problem is to add a language in this tag table. However, this translation problem does not apply to all categories. In general it only applies to free tagging categories.

Page Categorization
Field Name	Plugin	Comments
page_revision	taxonomy	Reference to the page revision to which this tag is attached.
tag	taxonomy	Reference to a page representing this tag.

For the news plugin to send emails generated from a given page, it has to know who needs to be emailed. This means it needs to have a list of subscribers and a list of what was sent when to whom.

Subscribers
Field Name	Plugin	Comments
subscriber	news	A reference to a page representing a user.
email	news	The user email if there isn't a page representing him/her yet.
subscription	news	A reference to a page type representing a newsletter the user is subscribed to. For comments, this is the page that receives comments (i.e. the parent) and not a page type.
last_email	news	Last time an email was sent to this user. This can be used to avoid sending more than 1 email per day, week, month, etc. (Should we have a way to accumulate email pages and then send them all in one email once we are permitted to send an email again?)

To determine when a newsletter shall be sent to someone, we want to determine when we last sent an email and when we have permission (as per the user specifications) to send another email. We may want to either accumulate multiple emails or lose the ones we cannot send if our speed is too high to send all the emails to someone.

Sent News
Field Name	Plugin	Comments
subscriber	news	A reference to a subscriber
news	news	A reference to a page representing a newsletter to be sent to that subscriber.
sent_on	news	The date when this email was sent. Zero if it wasn't sent yet (and needs to be at some point.)