I have to use a value to be used as “none” for payment method and
contact. In PL/pgSQL add_quote and edit_quote functions, that value is
NULL, while in forms it is the empty string. I can not simply pass the
empty string for either of these fields because PL/pgSQL expects
(nullable) integers, and "" is not a valid integer and is not NULL
either. A conversion is necessary.
Apparently, Go’s nil is not a valid representation for SQL’s NULL with
pgx, and had to use sql.NullString instead.
I also needed to coalesce contact’s VATIN and phone, because null values
can not be scanned to *string. I did not do that before because
`coalesce(vatin, '')` throws an error that '' is not a valid VATIN and
just left as is, wrongly expecting that pgx would do the job of leaving
the string blank for me. It does not.
Lastly, i can not blindly write Quotee’s tax details in the quote’s view
page, or we would see the (), characters for the empty address info.
This is for new users that do not start using the application from the
beginning of the current fiscal year and, therefore, need to create
invoices starting from a specific number.
I had to change the constraint on the currval to allow zero, otherwise
it would not be possible to set 1 as the next number, because users
can also not delete the row.
It is better that way because it works without JavaScript; if HTMx is
not available, it will just use regulars forms.
The problem is that most of the submit buttons where using formaction
to send the request to a different action, and only one button was the
“real” action. Since i could not pass the formaction to
invoice-product-form template, i have changed the “default” action to
the one with “ancillary” functions.
I have to use a different action to remove for each product because i
can not pass the index to the backend without JavaScript: it only
depends on the button click, that already has a name for the action.
Thus, in a way, i have “merged” the action and the index in a single
name.
With this button, it is no longer necessary to set the quantity to zero
to remove, at least not with JavaScript. This is why i am using Alpine:
to use x-cloak and hide it from non-JavaScript users.
Although, i wonder if it would not be better to use HTMx for that?
I tried this already when i started adding filters, but i tried to use
AlpineJS for that, and could not because it would reset the context each
time i submitted the filters, due to HTMx replacing the whole content.
I realized that the only thing i need is some “flag” to show and hide
the form with CSS. I do not even need AlpineJS for that, but i used it
anyway because then i can use the x-cloak thing to hidde the toggle
button for users with JavaScript disabled.
Similarly, the body by default has that “flag” set in the markup, and is
removed when AlpineJS is initialized, thus if JavaScript is disabled the
filters form is shown nevertheless.
That column was supposed to have a checkbox for batch operations, but
we do not have any operation that would like to perform to many products
or contacts at the same time. For now, at least.
I had to change MethodOverrider to check whether the form is encoded as
multipart/form-data or i would not be able to get the method field from
forms with files.
For now i add the file manually, i.e., outside add_expense and
edit_expense PL/pgSQL functions, because it was faster for me, but i
will probably add an attach_to_expense function, or something like that,
to avoid having the whole ON CONFLICT logic inside Golang—this belongs
to the database.
I was hit with a couple of bugs: hx-on not properly de-initializing,
with a workaround in 43fffb68 and properly fixed with version 1.9.2;
and elements with naked hx-trigger did not work with hx-boost, as i do
for the tag inline form, fixed in 1.9.1.
The other bug fixed in 1.9.1, play well with other libraries that also
use the window.onpopstate, did not affect me, i believe.
They are almost the same as for the multiselect, except that it “clicks”
the option to “select” it, as this will trigger the replacement of the
<fieldset> with the whole product.
I mainly did it for the new hx-on attribute, to click the update
button on recompute, but it does not seem to work as i think it does.
Anyway, there are some fixed bugs.
From the release announcement[0]:
## New Features
* Support for view transitions, based on the experimental View
Transitions API currently available in Chrome 111+ and coming to
other browsers soon.
* Support for “naked” hx-trigger attributes, where an hx-trigger is
present on an element that does not have an hx-get, etc. defined on
it. Instead, it will trigger the new htmx:triggered event, which
can be responded to via your preferred scripting solution.
* Support for generalized inline event handling via the new hx-on
attribute, which addresses the shortcoming of limited onevent
properties attributes in HTML.
## Improvements & Bug fixes
* A memory leak fix by @croxton
[0]: https://htmx.org/posts/2023-04-11-htmx-1-9-0-is-released/
The product search returns a list of products using its slug as the
“external key”, because i do not want people seeing the id in links,
and the search product list is just a different rendering of the product
index table.
However, now i had two almost identical select queries for product,
one using the product_id and the other its slug, the former intended for
the form to select products using checkboxes—the one non-JavaScript
users see—and the latter for the product search.
Using the slug in both forms i can now simplify the code and have a
single query.
With Oriol agreed that adding or editing invoices, products, and
contacts is not just a “user interruption” but the main flow of the
program, and, as such, it is not correct to use dialogs for these.
More importantly, it was harder to concentrate, specially with the more
involved form of invoices, because of all the “noise” behind the dialog.
I actually find more comfortable to select the product from the list
presented up until now, but this is mostly because i have very few
products and the list is not too long, so the idea is that with
JavaScript we will dynamically add an empty product row to the invoice
and then use the name field to search the product by name.
I have the feeling that i am doing something wrong because i ended up
with a lot of HTMx attribute for what i feel is not that much work,
but for now it will work.
I have added the `Is` field to `InputField` in order to include the `id`
attribute to the HTML element, because the HTMLAttributes are attached
to the `input`, not the `div`, and i felt like this one should also be
a custom element based on div, like all the others.
These is not yet any keyboard control to select the search results.
I am not happy with having the search of products in a different URL
than the index, specially since they use the exact same SQL query and
ProductFilter struct, but i did not know how else ask for a different
representation without resorting to the more complicated MIME types.
I need a way to search products by name in the invoice form, when the
user adds or changes a product. Since this is something that i have to
add too to the product list, i added it now so the function will already
be ready.
I was using the exact same form from edit and new pages of invoice,
which is not too bad considering it won’t change very often, but i now
want to be able to add new empty product lines with the add product
button, and i will need to have a template for that form, which would
mean a third copy.
We have reconsidered the toggle thing and instead moved the selection
into a little menu on top of the input, like the input’s label does à
la Material Design.
I just moved the checkboxes into a new details, that works as a menu,
but i had to add the type="search" to the existing input in the tags
field, or the CSS would style the checkboxes as well.
I do not do anything when the checkbox selection changes because that
already triggers a POST to the server that returns the new HTML with
the checkbox changed, and the JavaScript only has to retrieve that new
structure, exactly as it does in the initial rendering.
Since we want to add a little description to the options, i no longer
can use the same SelectOption in ToggleField, even though i could have
reused the Group element, but that felt wrong.
I realized that using a select for just two, short, options is overkill:
the select and its options use a lot more real state than the two
radios, which can have tooltips (not yet, though).
Since i am going to replace this field with a custom element that has
a toggle-like aspect, i already added the is="numerus-toggle" attribute
and use it for stying the non-JavaScript field.
This is because Oriol thinks that there may be cases where you want to
search invoices and such that have any of the selected labels, not all
of them, so we agreed on adding an option to choose.
The idea is that it will be a toggle, but this requires JavaScript and
this commit adds it as a dropdown as a first non-JavaScript step.
I use the same pattern as HTMx’s “Click to Edit” example[0], except that
my edit form is triggered by submit and by focus out of the tags input.
I could not, however, use the standard focus out event because it would
also trigger when removing a tag with the mouse, as for a moment the
remove button has the focus and the search input dispatches a bubbling
focusout. I had to resort to a custom event for that, but i am not
happy with it.
The autofocus attribute seems to do nothing in this case, so i need to
manually change the focus to the new input with JavaScript. However,
this means that i can not use the same input ID for all the forms
because getElementById would always return the first in document order,
changing the focus to that same element and automatically submit the
form due to focus out. That’s why in this form i append the invoice’s
slug to the input’s ID.
Finally, this is the first time i am using an HTMx-only solution and i
needed a way to return back just the HTML for the <td>, without <title>,
breadcrumbs, or <dialog>. In principle, the template would be the
“layout”, but then i would need to modify everything to check whether
the template file is empty, or something to that effect, so instead i
created a “standalone” template for these cases.
[0]: https://htmx.org/examples/click-to-edit/
This makes reload only the <main> portion of the page, instead of the
whole thing, which to me looks faster; haven’t really measured it.
Like with duplicate, i had to add the location query argument when
inside the view page in order to return back to the same page, not the
index.
Had to add a new hidden field to the form to know whether, when the
request is HTMx-triggered, to refresh the page, as i do when duplicating
from the index, or redirect the client to the new invoice’s view page,
but only if i was duplicating from that same page, not the index.
Since i now have to target main when redirecting to the view page, so
i had to add a location structure with the required json fields and all
that, when “refreshing” i actually tell HTMx to open the index page
again, which seems faster, now that i am used to boosted links.
Changed the invoice number field’s type to search to add the delete icon
on Chromium. Firefox does not add that icon, but i do not care; it is
still better that type="text".
Had to emit the change event to the numerus-tag field, otherwise the
form would not detect the change.
I also can not use keyup as a trigger because the changed modifier can
not be used in the <form>, as nothing ever changes, i do not know how to
trigger the form from children (i.e., data-hx-trigger on the <input>
does nothing), and i can not trigger for just any keyup, or i would
make the request even if they only moved the cursor with the arrow keys,
which is very confusing as Firefox resets the position (this may be due
the fact that i reload the whole <main>, but still).
Initially, this field was meant to be left almost always blank, except
for when we deleted invoiced and had to “replace” its number with a new
invoice; using the automatic numbering in this cas would not “fill in”
the missing number in the sequence.
However, we decide to not allow removing invoicer not edit their
numbers, therefore, if everything goes as planned, there should not be
any gap in the sequence, and that field is rendered useless.
Oriol suggested making it a read-only field, both for new and edit
forms, but i do not think it makes sense to have a field if you can not
edit it at all, specially in the new invoice dialog, where it would
always be blank. In the edit form we already show the number in the
title and breadcrumbs, thus no need for the read-only field as
reference.
I still keep a Number member to the form struct, but is now a string
(kind of “a read-only field”, in a way) and just to be written in the
title or breadcrumbs. I did not like the idea of adding a new SQL
query just for that value.
In this case i have to use the same id for the dialog content in all
pages because, for now, there are a couple of forms that need to replace
it on submit—the new/edit form and the product selection form.
Unfortunately, HTMx does not have support for `formaction` attribute at
this point, so i had to use the workaround described in [0].
[0] https://github.com/bigskysoftware/htmx/issues/623
Instead of using links in the invoice tags, that we will replace with a
“click-to-edit field”, with Oriol agreed to add a form with filters that
includes not only the tags but also dates, customer, status, and the
invoice number.
This means i now need dynamic SQL, and i do not think this belongs to
the database (i.e., no PL/pgSQL function for that). I have looked at
query builder libraries for Golang, and did not find anything that
suited me: either they wanted to manage not only the SQL query but also
all structs, or they managed to confuse Goland’s SQL analyzer.
For now, at least, i am using a very simple approach with arrays, that
still confuses Goland’s analyzer, but just in a very specific part,
which i find tolerable—not that their analyzer is that great to begin
with, but that’s a story for another day.
jordi fita mas
oriol carbonell pujolàs