change achievement categrory selection to dropdown

[Alex-Jordan]

This makes the category selection offer a dropdown with only the available categories.

[Alex-Jordan]

Although, this is not ideal. After selecting a category and submitting, then only the displayed category is available in the dropdown list. Not sure yet how to recover the list of all available categories.

[somiaj]

The only way I can think of was to just load all records at the start, then just loop/filter them with grep. The old transitional code I removed was already looping through all achievement records and there probably won't be too many achievements, so just loading them all is probably okay. I just wasn't sure how necessary that is if someone could just type out the category (even though a drop down would be nicer).

[Alex-Jordan]

I'll update this soon.

[Alex-Jordan]

OK, now there is a DB utility to list all the achievement categories and it puts them in the select using that utility.

[somiaj]

Works well, only thing I see is since the drop down always contains a valid category, the javascript validation for the filter can be removed for this case.

My thoughts were a bit more extensive, since I think we are doubling up on database calls here. Since we are getting all achievement records anyways when calling getAchievementCategories, would it be worthwhile just doing this in the initialize function, and then we have all the records, and can use them (vs making more database calls) in AchievementsList.pm when showing/filtering achievements, etc.

But your method lead me to another thought, what about let the database do the filtering (so we aren't really getting every possible record), instead have a listAllAchievementCategories method which does a database call like SELECT DISTINCT category FROM achievements_table, which gives us the list we want.

Anyways, once the javascript validation for this filter category is removed I'll merge, unless you think it is wort while addressing my other comments.

[somiaj]

Opps, clicked the wrong button.

[somiaj]

To remove the javascript validation just delete lines 68 and 75-78 in achievementlist.js, seems you have already taken out the error message div.

[Alex-Jordan]

I'd like to query like

SELECT DISTINCT category FROM coursename_achievement;

but I don't find any existing use of a DISTINCT query in the database code. There is a select method that is used, and maybe it has an option that supports distinct, or maybe I could extend it to support distinct, but I can't find where it is defined.

[somiaj]

I also couldn't figure it out. The only place I see DISTINCT is in lib/WeBWorK/Utils/ListingDB.pm, but these are doing raw sql queries vs using the database object. I didn't see any clear way using the database object and don't know it well enough.

[Alex-Jordan]

I think I see how to hack it in. Maybe the hack can be developed further once more eyes are on it.

[Alex-Jordan]

OK, it comes from SQL::Abstract::Classic...

[Alex-Jordan]

Alright I got it working so the database does the "distinct" part. And I don't think it's hackish.

[somiaj]

Deleted the wrong line here (my bad, I guess I read the line number incorrectly). Delete the line above this, 66, const filter_category = ....

[somiaj]

These are the lines, unsure why they didn't show up in my last review.

[Alex-Jordan]

Oh I added them (er deleted them) after your comment and then force pushed.

[Alex-Jordan]

And now sorted on the database end, not the perl end.

[Alex-Jordan]

OK, updated the js lines.

[somiaj]

Looks good now.