templates

This wiki has templates disabled.

Templates are files that can be filled out and inserted into pages in the wiki.

Using a template

Using a template works like this:

[[!template  id=note text="""Here is the text to insert into my note."""]]

This fills out the note template, filling in the text field with the specified value, and inserts the result into the page.

Generally, a value can include any markup that would be allowed in the wiki page outside the template. Triple-quoting the value even allows quotes to be included in it. Combined with multi-line quoted values, this allows for large chunks of marked up text to be embedded into a template:

    [[!template  id=foo name="Sally" color="green" age=8 notes="""
    * [[Charley]]'s sister.
    * "I want to be an astronaut when I grow up."
    * Really 8 and a half.
    """]]

Creating a template

To create a template, simply add a template directive to a page, and the page will provide a link that can be used to create the template. The template is a regular wiki page, located in the templates/ subdirectory inside the source directory of the wiki.

The template uses the syntax used by the [[!cpan HTML::Template]] perl module, which allows for some fairly complex things to be done. Consult its documentation for the full syntax, but all you really need to know are a few things:

Each parameter you pass to the template directive will generate a template variable. There are also some pre-defined variables like PAGE and BASENAME.
To insert the value of a variable, use <TMPL_VAR variable>. Wiki markup in the value will first be converted to html.
To insert the raw value of a variable, with wiki markup not yet converted to html, use <TMPL_VAR raw_variable>.
To make a block of text conditional on a variable being set use <TMPL_IF NAME="variable">text</TMPL_IF>.
To use one block of text if a variable is set and a second if it's not, use <TMPL_IF NAME="variable">text<TMPL_ELSE>other text</TMPL_IF>

Here's a sample template:

    <span class="infobox">
    Name: [[<TMPL_VAR raw_name>]]<br />
    Age: <TMPL_VAR age><br />
    <TMPL_IF NAME="color">
    Favorite color: <TMPL_VAR color><br />
    <TMPL_ELSE>
    No favorite color.<br />
    </TMPL_IF>
    <TMPL_IF NAME="notes">
    <hr />
    <TMPL_VAR notes>
    </TMPL_IF>
    </span>

The filled out template will be formatted the same as the rest of the page that contains it, so you can include WikiLinks and all other forms of wiki markup in the template. Note though that such WikiLinks will not show up as backlinks to the page that uses the template.

Note the use of "raw_name" inside the WikiLink generator. This ensures that if the name contains something that might be mistaken for wiki markup, it's not converted to html before being processed as a WikiLink.