• View
• Edit
• History
• Attach
• Print
• Backlinks

EditTemplates

Description

The $EditTemplatesFmt variable specifies the name of a wiki page to be used as a template for "new" pages. For example:

will say to use the page Cookbook.Template as the template for all new pages. $EditTemplatesFmt can contain references to $Group, $Name, etc., so

says to use 'Template' within the current group as the template for new pages.

Another possibility is

which looks in the Site group for a template matching the name of the page being created. For example, the above would use "Site.HomePageTemplate" (if it exists) anytime an author creates a page named "HomePage" (in any group).

An administrator can also specify an array of templates, in which case the first template found is chosen:

# use 'Template' in the current group if it exists, or the default group if it exists,
# otherwise use 'Main.MasterTemplate'
$EditTemplatesFmt = array('{$Group}.Template','{$DefaultGroup}.Template','Main.MasterTemplate');

One-Shot Templates

If you wish to create a new page based on the contents of an older page, without going through the effort to set it up as a template, then you can simply add the template= parameter to the end of the URL, like this:

which will produce a link that, when clicked on, will open the NewPage using the contents of OldPage as the default.

Single Page Templates

It is possible to modify a single page so that all links from it will use a common template. To modify the page SomeGroup.SomePage so all of the links within it will use the file SomeGroup.SomeTemplate as the edit template, create a file in the local directory named SomeGroup.SomePage.php containing the following php code:

<?
$LinkPageCreateFmt = "<a class='createlinktext'
href='\$PageUrl?action=edit&amp;template=SomeGroup.SomeTemplate'>\$LinkText</a>
<a class='createlink' href='\$PageUrl?action=edit&amp;template=SomeGroup.SomeTemplate'>?</a>";
?>

This changes the "edit new page" links in SomeGroup.SomePage to automatically include the template= parameter.

The Template Shuffle

It is also possible to use different templates in different sections of a page by making use of PmWiki's Markup() function to create a new directive, (:edittemplate:), which sets the template of all links which follow it. For example, assume you are setting up page with two groups of links, one to pages about movies, and one to pages about TV shows, and you wish those links to use edit templates Main.MovieTemplate and Main.TVTemplate, respectively. By placing (:edittemplate Main.MovieTemplate:) at the start of the movie links, and then placing (:edittemplate Main.TVTemplate:) at the start of the TV show links, each group will be set up to use the appropriate templates.

To make enable this capability, add the following to local/config.php:

# change the link format for creating new pages
$LinkPageCreateFmt = "<a class='createlinktext'
href='\$PageUrl?action=edit\$LinkTemplate'>\$LinkText</a>
<a class='createlink' href='\$PageUrl?action=edit\$LinkTemplate'>?</a>";

# default is no template
$FmtV['$LinkTemplate'] = '';

# the (:edittemplate Group.PageName:) markup causes any create page 
# links that follow to use Group.PageName as the template
Markup('edittemplate', 'directives',
'/\\(:edittemplate(\\s+(\\S+))?\\s*:\\)/e',
"PZZ(\$GLOBALS['FmtV']['\$LinkTemplate'] = '$2' ? '&amp;template=$2' : '')");

If after a specific section you want to return to the default new page behavior, simply insert (:edittemplate:) with no page reference, and the previously set template will be cleared.

Simple form for creating new pages

This is a simple form for creating a page using a template.

(:input form $ScriptUrl:)(:input hidden action edit:)
(:input hidden template MyTemplateGroup.MyTemplate:)
Please enter new page title: (:input text pagename size=32:)
(:input submit create "Create!":)
(:input end:)

When the editor fills the new page title and presses "Create!", he sees a new page where the textarea is not empty but filled with the content of the page MyTemplateGroup.MyTemplate.

See also the more advanced recipes New page box plus and New group box.

Notes and Comments

On pmwiki.org this recipe has been enabled for the Cookbook (local/Cookbook.php) as follows:

Thus any new pages created in the cookbook are pre-populated with the contents of Cookbook.Template. You can try it via Cookbook.SampleNewPage?action=edit (delete SampleNewPage if it already exists to see the template at work).

The following code in Board.php allows me to use a template only for those pages in the Board group whose title matches a certain pattern:

$minutes_pagename_pattern = "Board.Minutes[[:digit:]]{4}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}";
if ("edit" == $action and ereg($minutes_pagename_pattern, $pagename))
{
  $EditTemplatesFmt = "Board.MinutesTemplate";
}

In my V1 code I was able to use $Group instead of Board, but that doesn't seem to work anymore. Why not? Also, there's probably a better way to do this in V2, so I'd welcome suggestions. shi

Well, since you're placing the above in Board.php, you don't really need to match the group anyway (the group is known to be "Board"). So try this:

$minutes_pattern = '/\\.Minutes\\d{4}-\\d\\d-\\d\\d$/';
if ($action == 'edit' && preg_match($minutes_pattern, $pagename))
  $EditTemplatesFmt = 'Board.MinutesTemplate';

Also known as (by me anyway) page templates, prefilled pages, prefill edit box - maybe now my searches will find this page. NeilHerber March 23, 2006, at 12:24 PM

See Also

• Please note that various cookbook recipes also have methods to edit a new page based on a template.

Contributors

• Pm, 2005-03-05

Ok, so my name seems to be popping up more frequently here. I have tried 2 things (I'm using PMWiki build 2.65 (haven't upgraded yet to .68) and I'm having an issue with this command, which I need heavily to work.

I have used ->$EditTemplatesFmt = 'Cookbook.Template'; and ->$EditTemplatesFmt = '{$Group}.Template'; however with the first one ALL (even in different groups!) of my newly created wikipages included the text from my template and with the latter nothing appeared from my template. Am I doing something wrong? Additionally, I used

(:input form $ScriptUrl:)(:input hidden action edit:)
(:input hidden template LocalRestaurants.RestaurantName:)
Please enter new page title: (:input text pagename size=32:)
(:input submit create "Create!":)
(:input end:)

-Edit, ok, so I don't give up with no answer. I proceeded to find out what I was doing wrong and at the same time answered my own question, thankfully. The markup for the first part was really easy, I was just reading too much into the directions. So, for all you newbies out there, when it says ->$EditTemplatesFmt = '{$Group}.Template'; you must put that information (verbatum) in your local config and PMWiki will understand what to do next. I was putting LocalRestaurants.Template, instead it was $Group.Template. Good luck to all in working in this program! Thanks, Chris August 19, 2008