I’d like field-level permissions to be implemented as a first-class feature in PHPMaker, replacing the Fields Visibility extension.
The Fields Visibility grid is so huge that it’s difficult to work with when you have dozens of tables, each containing many fields. Also, it only allows for controlling visibility, not read/write permissions. I know you can set field permissions in code, and I do, but it would be much nicer to have this available within the UI.Ideally, field-level permissions would be implemented in the field settings within the main UI. For each field, you should be able to enter a function that determines the permissions based on whatever criteria you want; for example, user level. This could be constructed so that PHPMaker sets the permissions based on the return value from the function. For instance, 0 for hidden, 1 for read-only plain text display, 2 for a read-only field, and 3 for full read/write capability.This points to a related issue with the ReadOnly property, whereby it renders as a read-only field component, rather than plain text, which would be preferable in most cases. To display plain text in lieu of a field component, you have to use the Custom Edit Tag feature, which is not as convenient as just setting a property. Perhaps PHPMaker could provide a new property called PlainText, that could be set instead of the ReadOnly property.