Auto-generated filters

As of 10.8.0, Preside will auto generate basic filters for your preside objects. The system will iterate over your objects and generate multiple filter expressions for each of the object's properties.

Bypassing filter expression generation

You can tell the system to NOT auto generate filter expressions for a property by adding the autofilter=false attribute to the property:

property name="description" ... autofilter=false;

Configure filter expression generation

As of Preside 10.16.0, you can tell the system to NOT auto generate filter one or more expressions of a property by adding the excludeAutoExpressions="{one or more expression keys}" attribute to the property:

property name="example" ... excludeAutoExpressions="manyToOneFilter,manyToManyCount";

Filter expression role permission

As of Preside 10.16.0, you can configure which filter expressions of a property are auto generate for specific admin role by adding the autoFilterExpressions:{admin role}="{one or more expression keys}"

property name="example" ... autoFilterExpressions:contentadmin="propertyIsNull,datePropertyInRange" autoFilterExpressions:contenteditor="datePropertyInRange";

Auto-adding filters for related objects

The system can also add automatically generated filter expressions for many-to-one related objects. This means, for example, you can use filters for various contact object properties on a user object when the user object has a many-to-one relationship with contact.

The system will do this automatically for any many-to-one relationships that also have a unique index (effectively a one-to-one relationship). However, you can also add the autoGenerateFilterExpressions=true attribute to the property to force this behaviour:

poperty name="category" relationship="many-to-one" autoGenerateFilterExpressions=true ...;

Going multiple levels deep into relationships

If you want to auto generate filter expressions for related objects that are more than a single level deep, you can use the @autoGenerateFilterExpressionsFor attribute on the object definition.

For example, we may have the following related objects (each a many-to-one relationship): event_delegate -> website_user -> contact -> organisation. If we wanted our users to be able to easily filter event_delegate records by contact and organisation fields, we could add the @autoGenerateFilterExpressionsFor attribute as follows:

/**
 * event_delegate.cfc
 *
 * @autoGenerateFilterExpressionsFor website_user.contact, website_user.contact.organisation
 */
component {
	property name="website_user" relationship="many-to-one" relatedto="website_user";

	// ...
}

The syntax is a comma separated list of relationship chains that use the many-to-one property name at each stage of the relationship to define the path to the related object.

Customize the labeling used for multi-level filters

By default, auto generated filter expressions for related objects will be prefixed by the object name, e.g. Organisation: city contains text.

However, you may find that you have multiple relationships to the same object and want to customize the prefix that appears to indicate which relationship is being filtered on. To do so, use the relationship path specified in your @autoGenerateFilterExpressionsFor attribute inside your object's i18n .properties file to provide an alternative:

filter.prefix.website_user.contact.organisation=User organisation
filter.prefix.sponsor.organisation=Sponsor organisation

Customizing language for many-to-many and one-to-many filters

Auto-generated filter expressions for relationship fields look something like this (in English):

Attendee has any sessions
Attendee has (x) sessions
Attendee has sessions

This may be ok in many scenarios, but we can customize this language slightly to make it more accurate by changing the has to something different. To do so, edit the .properties file for your preside object and add the following keys: field.{relationshipPropertyName}.possesses.truthy and field.{relationshipPropertyName}.possesses.falsey. e.g.

field.sessions.possesses.truthy=is signed up to
field.sessions.possesses.falsey=is not signed up to

This will then result in filter expressions that appear more naturally:

Attendee is signed up to any sessions
Attendee is signed up to (x) sessions
Attendee is signed up to sessions