[Tsheetx-developers] Simple timesheet editing

[Peter L. <pal...@gm...>]

I have been looking at the simple.php form. I have mostly devised a way of
dealing with updates and insertions and deletions, and will soon be coding
it up.

The way the current code works though is to accept any change and apply it.
So if in a previous use of this simple weekly form the user entered some
time for client 1/project 1/task 1, and then in a subsequent update, decided
that he should have selected client 1/project 2/task 3, he can just go and
re-select the new project and task, and the time will now appear under the
new project. The current simple weekly timesheet does allow that change to
take place.

I would like to propose a different way of making such a change. I think
that once a user selects a specific client/project/task and enters time
against it, then that relationship should be locked down, and not be able to
be changed in the future. Hence, the user could change client/project/task
on first entering the data, but once he saves his changes, the
client/project/task dropdowns should be locked and be unchangeable.

Why? Well, with this current design, it is of no importance because all the
times records are deleted at start of processing anyway. I no longer want to
delete times records enn-mass, but decide to do update, insert or delete
times records based on the user editing. From this point of view, the
relationship between client/project/task and the entered time is important
to manage. And from a database design the relationship should not be changed
at will. In future, when the database has some design changes, and perhaps
referential integrity is introduced, such a change would not be allowed.
Hence I would like to tighten up the user interface now.

My suggestion will then require the user to delete the line containing the
entered times for client 1/project 1/task 1, and re-enter them on a new line
for client 1/project 2/task 3.

The alternative approach is to allow the user interface to work as it
currently does, allowing the user to change client 1/project 1/task 1 to
client 1/project 2/task 3, at any time. Under the covers the change would be
implemented by deleting the current times records and inserting new ones
with the new client/project/task.

What do you think about both approaches? Do you think I am making things
more complex?

Peter