I use customized built-in components, extended from any HTML elements
(e.g., HTMLDivElement), for product search, multiselect, and tags input
fields. The idea is that people that without JavaScript could still use
the regular, non-customized, inputs.
It turns out, this does not work so well: the CSS assumes that
JavaScript is enabled, and web components supported by the browser. If
one of these fails, then the controls are unusable—the multiselect is
too short, and the tags field accepts invalid characters that the
backend does not validate until it fails with a database error.
We discovered this because Apple does not implement customized built-in
components[0], hence it does not use my JavaScript code and forms,
the expenses forms in particular, are almost useless.
The way to fix this is to replace the regular inputs with autonomous
web components, extended from HTMLElement, using JavaScript, because
it would only do so with JavaScript enabled, and the CSS style would
only apply to these components, not the regular input fields.
However, currently i do not have time to do the proper fix, and have
to use a polyfill for Safari to support customized built-in components.
Shame.
[0]: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2013OctDec/0801.html
This is for users that belong to more than one company. It is just a
page with links to the home of each company that the user belongs to.
Had to add a second company to the demo data to test it properly, even
though i already have unit tests for multicompany, but, you know….
This was requested by a potential user, as they want to be able to do
whatever they want to do to these lists with a spreadsheet.
In fact, they requested to be able to export to CSV, but, as always,
using CSV is a minefield because of Microsoft: since their Excel product
is fucking unable to write and read CSV from different locales, even if
using the same exact Excel product, i can not also create a CSV file
that is guaranteed to work on all locales. If i used the non-standard
sep=; thing to tell Excel that it is a fucking stupid application, then
proper applications would show that line as a row, which is the correct
albeit undesirable behaviour.
The solution is to use a spreadsheet file format that does not have this
issue. As far as I know, by default Excel is able to read XLSX and ODS
files, but i refuse to use the artificially complex, not the actually
used in Excel, and lobbied standard that Microsoft somehow convinced ISO
to publish, as i am using a different format because of the mess they
made, and i do not want to bend over in front of them, so ODS it is.
ODS is neither an elegant or good format by any means, but at least i
can write them using simple strings, because there is no ODS library
in Debian and i am not going to write yet another DEB package for an
overengineered package to write a simple table—all i want is to say
“here are these n columns, and these m columns; have a good day!”.
Part of #51.
I want this button, as well as the submit button, to be on a row below
the filters’ input, especially for quotes and invoices, that have the
most filters and looks weird with the button wedged in. Thus, i added
a <fieldset> around all the filters.
Closes#69
Sometimes, if the space is tight, the browser may break the radio button
and the single-word label for the toggle, which looks very weird.
I did not set nowrap to all radio button because the no wrap would
prevent long labels to break, and i am not sure if there is any such
radio option. I know that for the toggle there is not any.
This works mostly like invoices: i have to “update” the expense form
to compute its total based on the subtotal and the selected taxes,
although in this case i do no need to compute the subtotal because that
is given by the user.
Nevertheless, i added a new function to compute that total because it
was already hairy enough for the dashboard, that also needs to compute
the tota, not just the base, and i wanted to test that function.
There is no need for a custom input type for that function as it only
needs a couple of simple domains. I have created the output type,
though, because otherwise i would need to have records or “reuse” any
other “amount” output type, which would be confusing.\
Part of #68.
Works exactly the same as for expenses, and this is sometimes convenient
for keeping transfer slips from customers and such.
I actually did not know where to add the download from this attachment,
because if add a column to the index it can easily be confused with the
download icon for the actual invoice.
Part of #66.
We only want two statuses for expense: not yet paid (pending), and paid.
Thus, it is a bit different from quotes and invoices, because expenses
do not pass throw the “workflow” of created→sent→{pending,paid}. That’s
way in this case the status field is already in the new expense form,
instead of hidden, and by pending is not equivalent to created but
unpaid (i.e., the same status color).
With the new select field in the form, the file field no longer can
span two columns or it would be alone on the next row.
Closes#67.
This is mostly to have better contrast with the alternative row color
(#EDE95E), because with Firefox’s default link color (#1B6ACB), on Linux
at least, the contrast ratio is 4,5:1.
Closes#62.
This was requested by Oriol; there are no other technical or legal
requirements for this.
I can not simply append the customer name to the file because it could
have characters that are not valid in file name depending on the
operating system, so i have to “slugify” it.
Closes#65
Using Orca or similar accessibility tools, it was not possible to
understand what these “menus” were intended for because they had only
icons without any alternative text, thus nothing to speak aloud with.
By default, when using hx-boost, HTMx adds the `show:top` modifier to
`hx-swap`. This is actually the wanted behaviour in these cases,
because it means that you are following a link to a “different” page,
and it makes sense to start from the top.
However, for quote and invoice forms is a hindrance because you are
usually editing the bottom-most product, as new lines are appended,
therefore you are all the time having to scroll down to the line.
Every. Single. Time.
Here i reverted the show:top to just show:false to keep the scroll as
is. I also added the show:bottom to the new product button, because
that way the window show entirely the new line.
I could not use `show🪟bottom`, however, despite appearing in the
documentation, because that, somehow, ended up doing the same as
`show🪟top`. Not sure if a bug or something i did not understand.
Closes#58.
This allows to import an Excel file exported from Holded, because it is
our own user case. When we have more customers, we will give out an
Excel template file to fill out.
Why XLSX files instead of CSV, for instance? First, because this is the
output from Holded, but even then we would have more trouble with CSV
than with XLSX because of Microsoft: they royally fucked up
interoperability when decided that CSV files, the files that only other
applications or programmers see, should be “localized”, and use a comma
or a **semicolon** to separate a **comma** separated file depending on
the locale’s decimal separator.
This is ridiculous because it means that CSV files created with an Excel
in USA uses comma while the same Excel but with a French locale expects
the fields to be separated by semicolon. And for no good reason,
either.
Since they fucked up so bad, decided to add a non-standard “meta” field
to specify the separator, writing a `sep=,` in the first line, but this
only works for reading, because saving the same file changes the
separator back to the locale-dependent character and removes the “meta”
field.
And since everyone expects to open spreadsheet with Excel, i can not
use CSV if i do not want a bunch of support tickets telling me that the
template is all in a single line.
I use an extremely old version of a xlsx reading library for golang[0]
because it is already available in Debian repositories, and the only
thing i want from it is to convert the convoluted XML file into a
string array.
Go is only responsible to read the file and dump its contents into a
temporary table, so that it can execute the PL/pgSQL function that will
actually move that data to the correct relations, much like add_contact
does but in batch.
In PostgreSQL version 16 they added a pg_input_is_valid function that
i would use to test whether input values really conform to domains,
but i will have to wait for Debian to pick up the new version.
Meanwhile, i use a couple of temporary functions, in lieu of nested
functions support in PostgreSQL.
Part of #45
[0]: https://github.com/tealeg/xlsx
Eventually, we will allow people to upload their own profile images,
but until then we’ll use a “generic” profile icon instead of the closed
icon, that means nothing to users.
We wanted to have the same icon for that menu than for the Account item,
but the one we used until now did not look inside the round button for
the menu, thus we changed the two.
Related to #55.
These two fields are just for information purposes, as Numerus does not
have any way to wire transfer using these, but people might want to keep
these in the contact’s info as a convenience.
Since not every contact should have an IBAN, e.g., customers, and inside
SEPA (European Union and some more countries) the BIC is not required,
they are in two different relations in order to be optional without
using NULL.
For the IBAN i found an already made PostgreSQL module, but for BIC i
had to write a regular expression based on the information i gathered
from Wikipedia, because the ISO standard is not free.
These two parameters for the add_contact and edit_contact functions are
TEXT because i realized that these functions are intended to be used
from the web application, that only deals with texts, so the
ValueOrNil() function was unnecessarily complex and PostreSQL’s
functions were better suited to “convert” from TEXT to IBAN or BIC.
The same is true for EMAIL and URI domains, so i changed their parameter
types to TEXT too.
Closes#54.
We need to have contacts with just a name: we need to assign
freelancer’s quote as expense linked the government, but of course we
do not have a phone or email for that “contact”, much less a VATIN or
other tax details.
It is also interesting for other expenses-only contacts to not have to
input all tax details, as we may not need to invoice then, thus are
useless for us, but sometimes it might be interesting to have them,
“just in case”.
Of course, i did not want to make nullable any of the tax details
required to generate an invoice, otherwise we could allow illegal
invoices. Therefore, that data had to go in a different relation,
and invoice’s foreign key update to point to that relation, not just
customer, or we would again be able to create invalid invoices.
We replaced the contact’s trade name with just name, because we do not
need _three_ names for a contact, but we _do_ need two: the one we use
to refer to them and the business name for tax purposes.
The new contact_phone, contact_web, and contact_email relations could be
simply a nullable field, but i did not see the point, since there are
not that many instances where i need any of this data.
Now company.taxDetailsForm is no longer “the same as contactForm with
some extra fields”, because i have to add a check whether the user needs
to invoice the contact, to check that the required values are there.
I have an additional problem with the contact form when not using
JavaScript: i must set the required field to all tax details fields to
avoid the “(optional)” suffix, and because they _are_ required when
that checkbox is enabled, but i can not set them optional when the check
is unchecked. My solution for now is to ignore the form validation,
and later i will add some JavaScript that adds the validation again,
so it will work in all cases.
We have shown the application to a potential user, and they told us that
it would be very useful to have a total in the table’s footer, so that
they can verify the amount with the bank’s extracts.
It would be very unusual to have an expense from a customer, and we do
not have (yet) a name for supplier or whatever it should be here, so i
used the same name we use for the column in the table.
Had to add an `unsafe` function to be able to translate text with HTML
fragments in it, although the fragments are added back with printf
because the login link is actually not translatable.
The same as for invoices: to allow people to have their own numbering
scheme, and for these that start using the program in the middle of the
current year.
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 want the `white-space: pre` to preserve the newline characters that
users may have used, but this prevents line wrapping and long lines are
not confined within the page margins.
`pre-line` preserves the newlines, but collapses spaces and tabs, and
wraps long text, which is more what i want.
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 had a lot of errors when trying to swap an element that has data-hx-on
attribute: it would tell me that it could not swap the bloody thing and
that t.onHandlers is not an iterable. I believe it also happened for
elements that did not have data-hx-on, but i am unsure at this point.
Apparently this is a bug introduced with version 1.9.0 of HTMx that as
of today is not yet fixed[0].
It seems that the problem that they keep the handlers created by
data-hx-on in an object, to be able to remove them afterward, but they
were looping the object with for(… of …) instead of for(… in …).
They will surely fix it in time, but since they will release a new
version, i have decided to change the minified code for now, as there
is no danger of replacing it with the new version—different file names.
[0]: https://github.com/bigskysoftware/htmx/issues/1368
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.
Apparently i was only testing that control with tab, because clicking
on any other non-focusable element (e.g., a table row) it did not add
the new tag and would not dispatch the “numerus-tag-out” custom element,
which is why i have seen it now.
This is equivalent to AlpineJS’s @click.outside, and i was already using
it for the multiselect dropdown. The isConnected check is because i
probably found some cases in the dropdown’s handler, but i can not
remeber now, but since AlpineJS does it too, i guess it is important.
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/
For some reason, i was looking at the value of the focus’ **target**,
which is not my search field at all, but whatever control the focus
changes **to**. It that new control is an input with value, then it
created a new tag with whatever my search field had, which could be the
empty string.
I realized that the event handlers that i was setting when creating the
tags input and the multi-select controls were not removed just because
these elements are no longer in the document, and kept firing again and
again.
I no longer can use an anonymous function, because removeEventListener
would not match it with the one passed to addEventListener. I also have
to bind the handler to `this` in order to keep having access to the
object, and, again, can not do it in the call to addEventListener, or
i would get a different function each time.
I added the check to see if the element is connected inside the
connectedCallback because the documentation warns that this callback
“may be called once your element is no longer connected”[0], and i
understood it to mean that the connected and disconnected callbacks
could be called our of order, thus it would be possible to add event
listeners that would not be removed—again.
I am not actually sure where i have to do the same for the rest of the
“internal” events.
[0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Web_Components/Using_custom_elements#using_the_lifecycle_callbacks
This is mainly because i sometimes think that the tag is accepted just
because it is there in the input, but actually it is not being used at
all. I fear more people would do the same mistake.
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.
We agreed with Oriol that this link would only serve to confuse people.
I initially added the link because i thought it was a shame to have to
navigate to the contact section to look or change the info of a customer
that you have an invoice for in front of you. However, it makes little
sense to be able to edit the contact from both sections, and we do not
have a “view page” for contacts to link to, thus the removal.
Had to add the editProductPage because now i need to know the slug in
order to build the form’s action link. I also added the `ProductName`
field because it was less awkward than using `.Form.Name` everywhere.
Mostly, the same problem as before: if the document title does not
reflect the application’s state, it becomes useless when there are
multiple open tabs.
In this case, however, i do not know how to tell HTMx to restore the
title to how it was before opening the dialog without a new request to
the server, that makes no sense when the dialog was closed without any
change whatsoever. Thus, i do it with JavaScript on the client side.
jordi fita mas
oriol carbonell pujolàs