How to report on a page hierarchy?

Question

Hi,

I'd like to build catalog of the third party components that we use in our product. To do so, I plan to build a page hierarchy like this:

+ Apache Commons Codec

+-- Apache Commons Codec 1.6

+-- Apache Commons Codec 1.7

+ Log4J

+-- Log4J 1.2.16

+-- Log4j 1.2.17

On the parent pages, I'd like to capture information about the product in general and on the child pages version specific information, including references to the version of our product it ships with.

The question now is: how can I build a report over this page hierarchy? I'd like to build a table like this:

|| Third party product || Version ||

| Apache Commons Codec | 1.6 |

| Log4J | 1.2.17 |

Is this possible? If so how? Or are there better ways to capture the information and build the report?

Bert Roos · Answer

I'm a bit familiar with both Reporting and Scaffolding, but not with applying that over an hierarchy of pages. My reports always pull from one level.

Here now, I'd need to pull generic information of the product from the parent page and then version specific information from the applicable child page. What macros would be applicable in that context?

The list of recipes is useful. I'll dig further into that.

CharlesH1 · Answer

I'd suggest a combination of Reporting & Scaffolding here (both commercial plugins by CustomWare).

Use scaffold fields (text-data macro) on each page to record the version number and component name. Make sure whatever field names you choose are consistently used across all the child pages.

In your hierarchy page (let's make that the parent page for simplicity) you can then use Reporting to analyse child pages and output the field values in a table (table-data macro).

If you've not used these plugins before then I'd recommend taking a look at the recipe book to get a feel for the power they offer. The Custom Child List may be a good starting point - hint: pull back your scaffold fields with {report-info:data:your_field_name}