72 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
72 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
This is an idea from [[JoshTriplett]]. --[[Joey]]
|
|
|
|
Some uses of ikiwiki, such as for a bug-tracking system (BTS), move a bit away from the wiki end
|
|
of the spectrum, and toward storing structured data about a page or instead
|
|
of a page.
|
|
|
|
For example, in a bug report you might want to choose a severity from a
|
|
list, enter a version number, and have a bug submitter or owner recorded,
|
|
etc. When editing online, it would be nice if these were separate fields on
|
|
the form, rather than the data being edited in the big edit form.
|
|
|
|
There's a tension here between remaining a wiki with human-editable source
|
|
files, containing freeform markup, and more structured data storage. I
|
|
think that it would be best to include the structured data in the page,
|
|
using a directive. Something like:
|
|
|
|
part of page content
|
|
\[[data yaml="<arbitrary yaml here>"]]
|
|
rest of page content
|
|
|
|
As long as the position of the directive is not significant, it could be
|
|
stripped out when web editing, the yaml used to generate/populate form fields,
|
|
and then on save, the directive regenerated and inserted at top/bottom of
|
|
the page.
|
|
|
|
Josh thinks that yaml is probably a good choice, but the source could be a
|
|
`.yaml` file that contains no directives, and just yaml. An addition
|
|
complication in this scenario is, if the yaml included wiki page formatted content,
|
|
ikiwiki would have to guess or be told what markup language it used.
|
|
|
|
Either way, the yaml on the page would encode fields and their current content.
|
|
Information about data types would be encoded elsewhere, probably on a
|
|
parent page (using a separate directive). That way, all child pages could
|
|
be forced to have the same fields.
|
|
|
|
There would be some simple types like select, boolean, multiselect, string, wiki markup.
|
|
Probably lists of these (ie, list of strings). Possibly more complex data
|
|
structures.
|
|
|
|
It should also be possible for plugins to define new types, and the type
|
|
definitions should include validation of entered data, and how to prompt
|
|
the user for the data.
|
|
|
|
This seems conceptually straightforward, if possibly quite internally
|
|
complex to handle the more complicated types and validation.
|
|
|
|
One implementation wrinkle is how to build the html form. The editpage.tmpl
|
|
currently overrides the standard [[cpan CGI::FormBuilder]] generated form,
|
|
which was done to make the edit page be laid out in a nice way. This,
|
|
however, means that new fields cannot be easily added to it using
|
|
[[cpan CGI::FormBuilder]]. The attachment plugin uses the hack of bouilding
|
|
up html by hand and dumping it into the form via a template variable.
|
|
|
|
It would be nice if the type implementation code could just use
|
|
FormBuilder, since its automatic form generation, and nice field validation
|
|
model is a perfect match for structured data. But this problem with
|
|
editpage.tmpl would have to be sorted out to allow that.
|
|
|
|
Additional tie-ins:
|
|
|
|
* Pagespecs that can select pages with a field with a given value, etc.
|
|
This should use a pagespec function like field(fieldname, value). The
|
|
semantics of this will depend on the type of the field; text fields will
|
|
match value against the text, and link fields will check for a link
|
|
matching the pagespec value.
|
|
* The search plugin could allow searching for specific fields with specific
|
|
content. (xapian term search is a good fit).
|
|
|
|
See also:
|
|
|
|
[[tracking_bugs_with_dependencies]]
|