Revision [4209]

This is an old revision of TableAction made by JavaWoman on 2005-01-07 16:45:22.

 

Table Action


See also:
This is the development page for the Table action.
 

History

The original Table action available in Wikka was developed by JsnX as part of the original Wikka release. It provides a way to create a simple table.

This Table action has a number of drawbacks, however:
  1. It is awkward to use for anything but the most simple tables - mainly because it's an action, which is different from the common approach to table markup in many Wikis: Most WikiEngines that support tables provide a table markup instead of a "plugin"-like solution like this.
  1. Cell contents can't have Wikka markup (if they do, the markup is shown as raw text instead of formatted).
  1. The action does not actually produce data table markup (which it should).

Preliminary solution

There is an ongoing discussion about providing true table markup in Wikka:

Clearly, we need a better solution than the current action, preferably (some kind of) true table markup syntax.
However, it would be unwise to release a "preliminary" markup, as it could easily lead to confusion among our user base (as well as needless conversions down the line), and extra work for the developers.
Instead, we should first determine what we want to be able to do in terms of table markup, and then look if we can find a simpler preliminary solution (as a subset of that markup) that still enables us to get there. And any preliminary solution should at least address the problem of ease-of-use and generating data table markup.

So, until we have come to a clear conclusion about "Wikka table markup", we won't have a preliminary Wikka table markup either. Still, there is a clear (and sometimes pressing) need for an easier way to produce HTML tables from Wikka code. Therefore I've investigated whether it was possible to extend the current Table action to provide more flexibility and address the major drawbacks at least partially. I was glad to find it wasn't actually all that hard.

I'm presenting here a rewrite of the Table action and a minor patch to the main wikka.php file (which could benefit other actions as well). It's far from a perfect solution for producing tables - but it's a lot more flexible and easier to use than the current table action. So I'm hoping this can tide us over until we embark on true table markup.

Patch for ./wikka.php
Two very small changes in ./wikka.php are going to provide us with the framework that enables the new Table action to be much easier to use. Essentially, they make it possible to:
The second option, while very important for easy maintainability of Table action content, should be approached with caution however: currently (most? all?) actions are not written to take advantage of this. While the new Table action is written specifically to make use of this, other actions may actually fail if multi-line parameters are passed to them. Current action code won't fail, but all action code will need to be investigated (and maybe patched) if the new capability causes problems.

[code to follow]

New Table action
Starting with the current Table action, refactoring, refactoring, refactoring .... many of you won't be surprised that I ended up with a complete rewrite of the table action. It provides a lot more flexibility but is completely backwards-compatible with the current table action. Still, if you want to test only, I'd advise you to store the code under the name of table2.php rather than table.php (as indicated below): that way you can test without influencing the operation of any current table actions on your Wikka site.

[code to follow]

Examples
[later]

Comments?

[later - and please wait till tis page is finished!]


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