ikiwiki/doc/todo/inline_postform_autotitles.mdwn

[[!tag wishlist patch plugins/inline]]
[[!template id=gitbranch branch=chrysn/patches author="[[chrysn]]"]]

for postforms in inlines of pages which follow a certain scheme, it might not
be required to set the title for each individual post, but to automatically set
the title and show no input box prompting for it.
this can either be based on timestamp formatting, or use the already existing
munging mechanism, which appends numbers to page titles in case that page
already exists.

two patches ([1], [2]) set inline up for that, adding an additional `autotitle`
parameter. if that is given, the regular input of the inline postform will be
replaced with a hidden input of that text. in addition, the empty title is
permitted (both for autotitle and regular titles, as they go in the same GET
parameter, `title`). as the empty page title is illegal, munging is used,
resulting in ascending numeric page titles to be created.

the second patch is actually a one-liner, filtering the title through strftime.

> Something similar was requested in [[todo/more_customisable_titlepage_function]],
> in which [[Joey]] outlined a similar solution.
>
> What's your use-case for not prompting for the title at all? I can see
> [[madduck]]'s requirement for the title he typed in (say, "foo")
> being transformed into 2009/07/26/foo or something (I name blog posts
> like that myself), but I can't quite see the use for *entirely* automatic
> titles.
>
> However, if that's really what you want, I suspect your code could be
> extended so it also solves madduck's second request on
> [[todo/more_customisable_titlepage_function]].
>
> --[[smcv]]

### potential user interaction issues

this has two side effects which have to be considered: first, the empty page
title is accepted also in normal postforms (previously, this resulted in a "bad
page name" error); second, entering a percent sign in that field might result
in unexpexted strftime substitution (strftime might not even substitute for
common uses of percent as in "reach 10% market share", but might in others as
in "the 10%-rule").

both can be circumvented by using another GET parameter for autotexts, as
implemented in [3].
> this patch still does not work perfectly; especially, it should make a
> distinction between "autotitle is set but equal ''" (in which case it
> should create a page named `1.mdwn`, and "autotitle is not set, and title is
> equal ''" (in which case it should display the old error message) --[[chrysn]]

### potential security issues

* the autotitle's value is directly output through the template (but that's
  done in other places as well, so i assume it's safe)
* i don't know if anything bad can happen if unfiltered content is passed to
  POSIX::strftime.

### further extension

having a pre-filled input field instead of an unchangable hidden input might be
cool (eg for creating an entry with yesterday's date), but would be a bit of a
problem with static pages. javascript could help with the date part, but name
munging would be yet another thing.

[1]: http://github.com/github076986099/ikiwiki/commit/b568eb257a3ef5ff49a84ac00a3a7465b643c1e1
[2]: http://github.com/github076986099/ikiwiki/commit/34bc82f232be141edf036d35e8ef5aa289415072
[3]: http://github.com/github076986099/ikiwiki/commit/40dc10a4ec7809e401b4497c2abccfba30f7a2af