[Feature Request] details row to accept widgets by default

[pxpm]

Feature Request

What's the feature you think Backpack should have?

I got this request/idea from a discussion in Laravel-Backpack/community-forum#712 where @susanu shared some code he's using in his project.

Basically the idea is to replace the empty details row blade template with a template that outputs widgets you can configure in your crud panels.

Have you already implemented a prototype solution, for your own project?

@susanu did implemented a prototype, it's in the linked discussion.

Do you see this as a core feature or an add-on?

I think we could do this change as a NON-BC in core.

[susanu]

Hi guys,

Any news about this?

[pxpm]

Hey @susanu I've been working on other stuff and didn't bring this to team attention yet so I am not sure if we are going to pursue this direction.

What I mean is that I think there are separated tasks here:
1 - change the default details_row template to look for widgets in details_row section
2 - add a new widget: column
3 - the way you proposed details_row to work look f*cking cool 😎 , but 100% we are not going to add tabs or glue columns, we made that mistake before with custom_html "field", we learned our lesson. 🙃

Regarding 1) and 2), I think the code you provided is pretty much the required thing. 3) is where things start to get interesting. Analyzing the current and possible future direction, can we come up with a way to have those tabs, rows, columns but not making them "columns" ?
My first thought was using the "div" widget https://backpackforlaravel.com/docs/6.x/base-widgets#div-1 or creating some new "details_row_widget" if we can't come up with something that works with div, but theoretically we should be able to use div to make the layout.
Regarding tabs, we probably need a new widget for that right ? A widget that works similar to div, and the definition would be something like:

[
    'type'    => 'div',
    'class'   => 'row',
    'content' => [ // widgets
        [ 'type' => 'tabs', 'content' => [
            'tab1' => [
                'title' => 'My Tab 1'
                'content' => ['type' => 'card' ... ],
            ],
            'tab2' => [
                'title' => 'My Tab 1',
                'content' => ['type' => 'card' ... ],
            ],
        ] 
    ]
]

What do you think ?

[susanu]

So, for me, details_row should contain information about the entry, current widgets will not work in this case because the information is static.

Another idea that crossed my mind is, instead of treating tabs as a column, we should have another entity type here, not sure how to name it.
This new entity would be a combination between widgets and columns and can be used in details_row and on UpdateOperation alongside fields.

I often need to display information about the current entry and the relationships in the edit page of the crud.

[pxpm]

What you mean is static ? You have $entry in the details_row template, so any widget you "build" there, can use the $entry too.
For example, you can display a card widget for the current entry:

// details_row.blade.php
@php
Widget::add([
    'type'    => 'div',
    'class'   => 'row',
    'section' => 'details_row',
    'content' => [ // widgets
        [ 'type' => 'card', 'content' => ['body' => $entry->id, 'header' => 'ID'], 'class' => 'col-md-6' ],
        [ 'type' => 'card', 'content' => ['body' => $entry->text, 'header' => 'TITLE'], 'class' => 'col-md-6' ],
    ]
])
@endphp

<div class="m-t-10 m-b-10 p-l-10 p-r-10 p-t-10 p-b-10" bp-section="crud-details-row">
    <div class="row">
        <div class="col-md-12">
            @include(backpack_view('inc.widgets'), ['widgets' => app('widgets')->where('section', 'details_row')->toArray()])
        </div>
    </div>
</div>
<div class="clearfix"></div>

So doing 1) that you proposed would be quite easy and open a lot of opportunities. What I am thinking now is also an easy solution where you could write your widgets definition without having to create the blade file yourself.
Maybe we can introduce a setupDetailsRow() function so that you can add the widgets from the controller ?

Note: one thing I noticed is that we probably need to accept an array of stacks instead of a single string, so that the same widget definition can be reused in multiple operations that use different stacks.

I think doing "just" this would allow you to achieve the desired results creating a couple of additional widgets (for eg. "tabs widget", "column widget", "table widget" etc .., that is something we can do), instead of "one function columns", or introducing some kind of new concept in crud to build specific stuff with tabs.

What do you think ?