Meta field information Interchange can store meta information for selected columns of tables in your database. This meta information is used when the user interacts with the database. For example, the meta informaton for a "Hide Item" field might specify that a checkbox be displayed when the user edits that field, since the only reasonable values are "on" and "off". Or, the meta information might specify a filter on data entered for a "Filename" field which makes sure that the characters entered are safe for use in a filename. "Widget type" specifies the HTML INPUT tag type to use when displaying the field in, say, the item editor. "Width" and "Height" only apply to some of the "Widget type" options, for instance the "Textarea" widget. "label" is displayed instead of the internal column name. For example, the "category" column of the "products" table might have a label of "Product Category". "help" is displayed below the column label, and helps describe the purpose of the field to the user. "help url" can be used to link to a page giving more information on the field. "lookup" can be used when a field is acting like a foreign key into another table. In that case, you'll probably want to use some sort of select box as the widget type, and if you want to reference multiple rows in the destination table, you'll probably want to use a multi select box, with "colons_to_null" as the pre_filter, and "::" as the lookup_exclude. "filter" and "pre_filter" can be used to filter data destined for that field or data read from that field, respectively. |