Hi Rules People!
I try to get into the rules stuff at the moment but I am kind of stuck now.
I started with Johans talk at Copenhagen and watched the recording of his session (http://www.archive.org/details/BeAHappierDrupalDeveloperWithRules) several times now. (By the way is there anywhere a better quality version of the video than this Flash thing - other sessions are available as mp4!?)
The only other screencast I could find is one from Matt Petrowsky (http://gotdrupal.com/videos/drupal-workflow-automation) does anyone know another one?
I read through all the documentation and still have some beginner questions.
Can someone explain me when to use a "Triggered Rule After Saving.." and when a "Form Event".
I have the feeling that Triggered Rules -> Rule Settings -> Event (After Saving new content) -> Condition -> Node (Content has type XY) -> DO something
is the same as
Event (XY node form is submitted) -> No condition necessary -> DO something
If this is the same, are there other reasons to go for the one or the other way depending on the situation?
Comments
The same and not
Happy to hear that my session got you started with Rules!
-1-
Using form events instead of triggering on node save would work, and theoretically it might be a shortcut to what you want to achieve. But before going down that path you should know the following:
* The form supports can be a performance sink -- which is why they are activated on a per form basis. (No pun intended.)
* There are no Tokens available inside the form handling -- quite much work in a different way when it comes to how data is stored. Thus, using data from inside the form will probably be more difficult than using data from a saved node.
* Rules 2 for Drupal 7 does not yet have forms support, and when it does it will most likely be radically different from the Rules 1 version.
I've used Rules Forms Support only a little, so if anyone can provide more information I'd be happy to listen. Usually I only use it when I want some fancy stuff for form default values.
-2-
I know that NodeOne made a camera recording from my session, but I still haven't seen any of it (and don't know the quality). I was suprised too by the difficulties to see what was going on in the screencast from the presentation.
I had planned to capture everything locally from my computer as well, but when on stage I forgot it all. Sorry. :-/
I've made a few other screencasts about Rules, but most are in Swedish. This is in English though: http://nodeone.se/blogg/johan-falk/nodeone-talks-drupal-rules-%E2%80%93-...
It only covers the basics, and from what I understand from your question you won't learn very much from the screencast. However, you can always post comments to it to request some new screencasts in the future!
Good luck with becoming a happier Drupal developer with Rules!
//Johan Falk, NodeOne, Sweden
Can you elaborate on the performance issues?
I am using Rules Forms Events to trigger a role change on a custom Profile field because I couldn't figure out another way to do it and feel Content Profile is overkill for a single added field.
Can you explain what kind of perfomance hit that might cause? I'm very concious of performance issues as I continue to have issues with overusing server resources...
Not trying to hijack the OP but hope this is a related question you might also want the answer to.
Thanks.
Probably no problem
I don't know very much about performance and Rules Forms Support, but I know that it is activated on a per form-basis because it would take some power to run rule checks on every form load that Drupal does.
However, just adding one pretty simple rule to one form will most likely not cause any problems – so don't get sleepless over this. :-)
Cheers!
//Johan Falk, NodeOne, Sweden
PS: You were pretty lucky that I found this question. I thought someone had posted a follow-up question to this thread and checked it out, but only after answering/commenting two new threads. In general it is better to start new threads for new questions.