Interesting MODx Tools

I frequently watch the MODx forums and tend to spot some interesting MODx tools you might not know about, especially if you are new to the MODx community.

Please understand I am not saying that I have used every one of these tools, I am only trying to create a list of MODx resources that could be useful and that newer users might not have been aware of (from a little off the beaten path).

  • Quill – Quill increases usage of MODx documents and TVs. You can easy bind documents to TV, show and use controls of TV and more.
  • Automatic Unpublish – Automatically insert a value for unpub_date based on a document variable or TV with a date value.
  • tvEditor – tvEditor is a GUI for tv options editing. Dropdown, listbox, option, listbox-multiple and radio are supported (even those containing @BINDINGS). You can edit, add, sort tvoptions. You can search documents for each tvs or create custom forms.
  • FormBuilder – Easily build forms through the manager and display on your site.
  • myForum – Forum snippet for MODx.
  • getField – Returns any field or template variable from any document or any of its parents.

11 Comments. Posted by on Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 1:00 pm.

Filed under CMS, Development.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=745570198 Jason Imani

    Hey Greg,

    Nice post…just curios about of couple of the extensions. How does Quill differ from Ditto? What are potential scenario which one would use Quill?

    The other one that looked interesting was the tvEditor. Aside from the ability to search for TV's. Can't one just sort, edit, etc…within the TV itself? Maybe I have a limited view of the benefit because I don't have that much experience.

    Thanks!

  • http://www.gregorysmart.com Gregory Smart

    You know, I have had some of the same observations about Quill. I do think that it is possible to achieve some of the same results with Ditto.

    As far as tvEditor, I can honestly say that I have not used this myself. While I do think it is interesting, conceptually, I although I haven't used it myself on a commercial project.

  • http://www.michael-van-laar.de Michael van Laar

    Same here, regarding Quill. I haven't tried it yet. But what I get from the description, it does the same I'm already doing with TVs. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

    E.g. to show a checkbox list to chose related downloads (which are organized as single documents within a parent document with the ID “20″) for an article, I just use the following code as TV input option:
    @SELECT pagetitle, id FROM [+PREFIX+]site_content WHERE parent='20'

    Isn't this more or less equal to the currency example on the Quill repository page?

  • http://www.gregorysmart.com Gregory Smart

    It seems so. I have done the same type of thing with Ditto in a TV too. There are so many paths to solutions in MODx, that's why I stay so fired up about it.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=745570198 Jason Imani

    Hey Gregory…I would love to see a tutorial on @bindings…I've always wanted to know more about them. How to use them, some examples…

  • http://www.gregorysmart.com Gregory Smart

    I will definitely put that one on my list. Thanks!

    Thanks, Greg.

    Greg Smart
    Project Manager
    Pleth, LLC
    1-888-276-0848

  • http://christianhanvey.myopenid.com/ crunch

    i second that call – bindings are an area of modx i really havn't learned to exploit yet, and I feel that they have the potential to be 'shortcuts' for a lot of the methods i use at the minute – but I've never really found the time to suss out what they are all about.
    I'd love to see a good use / clever example of what you can do with bindings!

  • Thomas

    Hi Greg, It looks like from another post you have had more experience with Quill to date. Do you still feel that Ditto can accomplish this or do you feel that Quill has something else to offer?

    I have looked at Quill, but until I really use it the documentation does not help to see the possibilities. To accomplish I think the same thing I used a solution like Michael's above, currently using a TV Select binding to the “alias” of the documents in container.

  • http://www.gregorysmart.com Gregory Smart

    I have used Quill on a couple of projects, but haven't found anything it can do that Ditto can't.

  • Thomas

    Thanks Greg!

  • http://www.gregorysmart.com Gregory Smart

    No, this site is WordPress. I started it long before I had ever heard of MODx. Am planning on porting it over to MODx at some point, but since it is purely a blog WP is a good tool for the job.