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.
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
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.
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.
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.
With Oriol we agreed that contacts should have tags, too, and that the
“tag pool”, as it were, should be shared with the one for invoices (and
all future tags we might add).
I added the contact_tag relation and tag_contact function, just like
with invoices, and then realized that the SQL queries that Go had to
execute were becoming “complex” enough: i had to get not only the slug,
but the contact id to call tag_contact, and all inside a transaction.
Therefore, i opted to create the add_contact and edit_contact functions,
that mirror those for invoice and products, so now each “major” section
has these functions. They also simplified a bit the handling of the
VATIN and phone numbers, because it is now encapsuled inside the
PL/pgSQL function and Go does not know how to assemble the parts.
Had to change the data context for that template to include the Slug,
so that the <form> element can set the correct `action` instead of
using the current URI, as it is no longer “correct” (form-wise) when
using HTMx.
jordi fita mas
oriol carbonell pujolàs