Wiki Plugins

The Wiki syntax is powerful enough for normal Wikis, but sometimes you need features not present in the Wiki. To ease the process of extending the Wiki syntax Tiki allows you to define a "plugin" to extend the Wiki syntax. Minimum PHP programming skills are needed to build a plugin.

Wiki plugins extend the function of wiki syntax with more specialized commands. Usually expressed in {curly brackets} plugins compact a chunk of PHP or HTML code into something that can be understood by non-programmers.

You can view a list of plugins (maybe not the whole list) by clicking wiki help --> show plugins near the bottom of any wiki edit page, or on the wiki help icon on the right side of the page when you're in edit mode. Also, here is a mod you can do to convert the fckeditors templates button into a dialog that can insert wiki syntax. Check it out here: WysiwygPluginButton

See also:

• Plugin Security
• Plugin Help

Table of contents

• Wiki Plugins
  • Currently Distributed Plugins
  • Installing a new plugin
  • What they look like:
  • Creating A Plugin
  • Special Plugins
  • Alias

Currently Distributed Plugins

This is a list of all the bundled plugins with a documentation page on this site- not all distributed plugins have their own page. However, some information is available about all plugins at PluginManager. The list of bundled plugins varies with each Tiki version - please see All Plugins for which are available in 2.0 and 3.0. You can install any plugins that are not bundled - please read about it on this page at Installing a new plugin.



Note: Be sure the plugin you want to use is enabled by (since 3.0) going to Admin Home > Editing and Plugins > Plugins (tab) and checking the "Enable" box fir that plugin and clicking "Change Preferences."

Installing a new plugin

Some plugins are not installed by default in your tiki installation. They can be installed at a later stage as a Mod. See how to install them:

http://doc.tikiwiki.org/Mods+User

What they look like:

Plugins often have "begin" and "end" tags and are identified in a wiki page using the following syntax:

{PLUGINNAME(parameter1=>value,parameter2=>value)} content affected by plugin {PLUGINNAME}

• {NOSPACESAREALLOWEDINPLUGINS(anywhere)}
• plugins are often case sensitive
• parameters you don't specify will be set to their defaults.
• parameters are separated by commas, values within a parameter are separated vertical bars |
• you can use either => or = in parameters.

Example:

Creating A Plugin

We may want to create a plugin to allow text formatting in any font and size:

{FONT(size=>20,face=>arial)} some text {FONT}

If a plugin doesn't require parameters you can use

{EXAMPLE()} content {EXAMPLE}

When tiki finds a plugin the engine will look at the plugin name and look for the file

lib/wiki-plugins/wikiplugin_name.php

For example

lib/wiki-plugins/wikiplugin_font.php

That file should be a PHP file defining the function

function wikiplugin_font($data,$params) {}

The function receives the plugin content in $data and the parameters in the $params associative array. The function manipulates the content and must return a string with the HTML that will replace the plugin content when rendering the wiki page (it can be just text if no HTML markup is needed).

This is an example: the example plugin:

function wikiplugin_example($data,$params) {

extract($params, EXTR_SKIP);

if(!isset($face)) {
return ("<b>missing face parameter for plugin</b><br/>");
}
if(!isset($size)) {
return ("<b>missing size parameter for plugin</b><br/>");
}
$ret = "<span style='font-face: $face; font-size: $size'>$data</span>";
return $ret;
}

The return of your plugin will be wiki parsed. If you do not want it to be parsed again, you must enclose the value like this

return '  ~np~'.$ret.'~/np~  ';

Plugins are a powerful tool. These are some ideas for plugins:

• Display some language code highlighting its syntax
• Display snippets of code
• Display poetry
• Display text using a special style
• Display charts, gauges.
• Show information from other sites.
• Use plugins to display and maintain bibliography information (using Pybliographer for instance)
• Etc., etc., etc

Special Plugins

These aren't real plugins but, like plugins, use a slightly different curly braces syntax. Unlike plugins, you don't "close" them. e.g., use { maketoc} instead of { maketoc()} { maketoc}. These can also appear in template (.tpl) files.

Banner	Displays a banner. { banner zone=}. Set up banners via admin menu. Note that if you assign multiple banners to the same zone, will pick a different banner in that zone each time (more or less) the page is refreshed.
content	Displays dynamic content
draw	Displays a drawing which is an image that can be modified via a Java applet. { draw name=}. name must be unique for the entire site. Requires "drawing" feature to be turned on via the admin menu. If the drawing doesn't exist, the page will display a button that will create the drawing.
img	Displays an image { img src= height= width=}. Mimics the HTML img tag.
maketoc	Displays an indented table of contents using !, !!, !!! headers. { maketoc}.
RSS	Displays an RSS feed. { rss id= max=}. Set up RSS feeds via admin menu (RSS Modules).
TOC	Displays a table of contents for the structure that the page belongs to.

Alias

• Plugin
• Plugins

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