PHP-UWA Widget Library Introduction

This book shall give you an itroduction on how to use the PHP-UWA Widget Library.

Intro

The Universal Widget Architecture Standard is defined and documented on the Netvibes Development Page. The goal is to code a widget and use it on several sites: This might trigger an activity in widget-development. Let us use this to the benefit of siteadmins and to the one of the widget-coderz.

Screenshots

The included example shows all possibilities in a simple way:
[img_assist|nid=29|title=PHP-Uwa Library Example|desc=|link=popup|align=none|width=81|height=100] One application is a Moodle Block. Moodle is an open source learningmanagement system (lms): [img_assist|nid=41|title=Moodle Unit Wdget|desc=|link=none|align=none|width=253|height=319] [img_assist|nid=38|title=Moodle Google Notebook Widget|desc=|link=none|align=none|width=248|height=318]

Usage

Show a widget

To show a widget, the library has to be included and the class has to be instantiated. A Call to getWidgetHTML shows the code: 
<?php
require_once('uwawidget.php');
$uwawidget=new uwawidget('http://www.netvibes.com/api/uwa/examples/digg.xhtml');
echo $uwawidget->getWidgetHTML();
?>
All values are filled with defaults.

Getting metatdata

There are two types of metadata, packed in arrays:
$uwawidget->getMetaData()
Author, Keywords, ...
$uwawidget->getAdditionalData()
Icon, Stylesheets, ...

Displaying editforms

There are two types of settings:
Configuration
Displaysettings for the widget. These are the same for all widgets.
Preferences
These are widget dependent, Not every widget has preferences.
You can get all needed data in a handy array by calling getSettingsFormData($section). $section is one of the following:
general
Mainly the widget url.
configuration
Display Configuration Settings.
preferences
Widget dependend preferences.
Even more simple is the possibility to get the HTML: 
<form action="<?php echo $_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]; ?>" method="post">
<?php
$settingshtml['general']= $uwawidget->getSettingsHTML('general');
$settingshtml['configuration']= $uwawidget->getSettingsHTML('configuration');
 
$prefs= $uwawidget->getSettingsHTML('preferences');
if ($prefs) {
	$settingshtml['preferences']= $prefs;
}
 
// Show Hidden fields
foreach ($settingshtml as $section => $fields) {
	if (isset ($fields['hidden'])) {
		foreach ($fields['hidden'] as $hiddenfield) {
			echo $hiddenfield;
		}
		unset ($settingshtml[$section]['hidden']);
	}
}?>
<table cellpadding="9" cellspacing="0">
<?
foreach ($settingshtml as $section => $setting) {
	echo '<tr>' . "\n";
	echo '  <td colspan="2">' . "\n";
	echo '  <b>' . get_string($section, 'block_uwa_widget') . '</b></td>' . "\n";
	echo '</tr>' . "\n";
	foreach ($setting as $label => $html) {
		echo '<tr valign="top">' . "\n";
		echo '<td align="right">' . $label . ':</td>' . "\n";
		echo '<td>' . $html . '</td>' . "\n";
		echo '</tr>' . "\n";
	}
}
?>
<tr>
    <td colspan="2" align="center">
    <input type="submit" value="<?php print_string("savechanges") ?>" /></td></tr>
</table>
For setting these values in the widget, you can use the classes' setters: 
if(isset($_POST['moduleUrl'])) {
	$index=$_POST['moduleUrl'];
  	$uwawidget->setModuleUrl($examplewidgets[$index]['moduleUrl']);
}
if(isset($_POST['configuration'])) {
  	$uwawidget->setConfiguration($_POST['configuration']);  	
}
if(isset($_POST['preferences'])) {
  	$uwawidget->setPreferences($_POST['preferences']);  	
}