Possible idea for acheiving publishing workflow complete with post editing restrictions
I am building a site that is in need of a publishing workflow that needs to be able to revoke editing of posts after a certain transition occurs. A few ideas seem like they could work. The one that seems relatively easy to implement I will outline here.
Drupal Version:
6.x
Modules used:
Workflow
Actions/Trigger
CCK
Possible method:
Create a workflow that consists of an initial created/editable state and an approved state. In the first state, the author would create a post that automatically transitions into the created/editable state. A moderator has the ability to move the post into the approved state, or flag the post to be edited and re-submitted. If the moderator moves the post to approved, then the post should no longer be editable by the author. The way that seems like it could work is to use the advanced action "change author of a post". This could be triggered when the post transitions to the approved state. The only issue that has to be handled is keeping up with the original post author which could be handled through a CCK field that is set at initial creation and doesn't change.
This approach seems like a workaround at best and/or a hack. Does anyone know another approach that could do this more easily, or a more elegant solution?
Thanks for any help
Essentially your approach is correct
My suggestion would be to buy the Lullabots' recent book, Using Drupal, which includes a chapter (the sixth) which covers precisely this: how to build a basic workflow with the functionality you need, and also including the sending of relevant messages to people involved in the workflow, as well as how to show for every role the nodes in the appropriate state. Of course the book is useful for many more topics and if you're in a hurry you can buy and download at once the e-version.
Have you looked into the
Have you looked into the modr8 module? http://drupal.org/project/modr8
Coding Solution
If you wanted to do some coding yourself, Drupal's node grants system is very useful for this. At The Cornell Daily Sun, we use a custom-built module to handle a lot of these details. Articles can have different statuses from being a story assignment any writer can pick up to being an edited article ready to publish. Different people can edit or view the article based on its status.
So if you used the Workflow module or any module, you could also write your own module that would grant writers the edit grant unless the workflow status indicates the article has been approved.