HelpOnMacros

Contents

Macros

1. Macros

Macros allow the insertion of system features into normal wiki pages; the only thing that makes those pages special is that they contain macros. If you edit pages like RecentChanges or SystemInfo, you'll see what that means.

For more information on the possible markup, see HelpOnEditing.

1.1. Search macros

MoinMoin now uses a new search engine, that lets your make sophisticated searches using both the interactive search box or any of the search macros. For more help, see HelpOnSearching.

Macro	Description	Example
`[[TitleSearch]]`
	create a search box on the page, which search the page titles	See FindPage
`[[FullSearch]]`
	create a search box on the page, which search the page contents	See FindPage
`[[FullSearch()]]`
	print a list of pages whose content matches the current page title (like clicking on the page title)	See the CategoryCategory page
`[[FullSearch(text)]]`
	print a list of pages whose content matches the search term	Search for `powered`: FrontPage HelpOnMacros WhyWikiWorks
`[[FullSearchCached(text)]]`
	Works like the `FullSearch` macro but caches the results statically. Use it if you prefer speed over an up-to-date result	Search for `powered`: FrontPage HelpOnMacros WhyWikiWorks
`[[GoTo]]`
	directly go to the page you enter	See the FindPage
`[[PageList(Help)]]`
	print a list of pages whose title matches the search term	See the HelpIndex

1.2. Navigation

Macro	Description	Example
`[[RecentChanges]]`
	a list of recently edited pages	See RecentChanges
`[[TitleIndex]]`
	an index of all page titles	See TitleIndex
`[[WordIndex]]`
	an index of all words in page titles	See WordIndex
`[[WantedPages]]`
	list links to non-existent pages	See WantedPages
`[[OrphanedPages]]`
	list pages no other page links to	See OrphanedPages
`[[AbandonedPages]]`
	list pages that were not edited for the longest time	See AbandonedPages
`[[RandomPage]]`
	a link to a random page	2008/480a/projects
`[[RandomPage(#)]]`
	links to a number of random pages	Two random pages: BadContent uwcrypto
`[[TableOfContents([maxdepth])]]`
	display a local table of contents, possibly limited to a maximal depth	See above
`[[Anchor(anchorname)]]`
	macro to insert anchors into a page	#here
`[[Navigation(children[,maxdepth])]]`
	macro to list all of a pages' children	See start of this page
`[[Navigation(siblings[,maxdepth])]]`
	quick navigation to siblings of a page	See /MailTo
`[[Navigation(slideshow)]]`
	creates a link to toggle between slide show and wiki mode, and a link to start the slide show	See HelpOnSlideShows
`[[Navigation(slides)]]`
	displays first/prev/next/last links	See HelpOnSlideShows
`[[AttachInfo]]`
	displays number of attachments for current page	See HelpOnActions/AttachFile
`[[AttachInfo(page)]]`
	displays number of attachments for page	See HelpOnActions/AttachFile
`[[AttachList]]`
	displays list of attachments for current page	See HelpOnActions/AttachFile
`[[AttachList(page)]]`
	displays list of attachments for page	See HelpOnActions/AttachFile

1.3. System information

Macro	Description	Example
`[[InterWiki]]`
	a list of all known InterWiki names	InterWiki
`[[SystemInfo]]`
	info on the wiki, the python interpreter and the host system	SystemInfo
`[[PageCount(exists)]]`
	current page count. If `exists` is supplied as an argument, only existing pages will be shown.	816 pages
`[[PageSize]]`
	list the sizes of all pages	See PageSize
`[[StatsChart(type)]]`
	shows statistical charts (currently defined types: hitcounts, pagesize, useragents)	See EventStats and subpages
`[[SystemAdmin]]`
	Information for system administrators	Needs admin rights.

1.4. Others

Macro	Description	Example
`[[ImageLink(image,target[,width=width[,height=height]][,alt=alttag])]]`
	This macro is used to make a link that displays an image (can be given as either attachment or URL) and links to either an URL or a wiki page. Optionally the size of the image can be adjusted. If no target is given the link will point to the image itself.	See /ImageLink
`[[Icon(image)]]`
	display system icons	See HelpOnNavigation
`[[UserPreferences]]`
	display a user preferences dialog	See UserPreferences
`[[UserPreferences(createonly)]]`
	display user creation dialog
`[[BR]]`
	insert a line break	1st line 2nd line
`[[RandomQuote(pagename)]]`
	Select a random quote from the given page, or from `FortuneCookies` if ommitted	Hint: get email notification when this page changes, by clicking Subscribe.
`[[Include(HelloWorld[,"heading"[,level]])]]`
	include contents of another page	for details see /Include
`[[FootNote(text)]]`
	Add a footnote¹, or explicitely display collected footnotes when no args are given	See below for an example.
`[[Date(timestamp)]]`
	display a timestamp according to system settings	2013-05-12
`[[DateTime(timestamp)]]`
	display a timestamp² according to user settings	2013-05-12 01:32:49
`[[GetText(text)]]`
	loads I18N texts (mainly intended for use on Help pages)	"EditText" is translated to "EditText"
`[[TeudView]]`
	useful for intranet developer wikis, a means to view pydoc documentation, formatted via a XSLT stylesheet	See http://twistedmatrix.com/wiki/python/TeudProject
`[[MailTo(email)]]`
	protect your email address from spam bots	for details see /MailTo
`[[NewPage(PageTemplate,ButtonLabel,ParentPage[,NameTemplate])]]`
	Allow the user to create (sub-) pages easily, using the page `PageTemplate`as the template for the new page and the string `NameTemplate` as a template for the name.³
`[[GetVal(NeatSnippets,regards)]]`
	Retrieve dictionary entries from dict pages.	If you have a page called GermanDict which contains the entry Test, you should see the translation here:
`[[MonthCalendar(,,12)]]`
	Displays a Calendar and creates link for entries to each day on subpages	See /MonthCalendar

1 the text cannot contain any wiki markup
2 "timestamp" can be empty (current time), a number of seconds since 1970 (unix timestamp), or a W3C time specification ("2002-01-23T12:34:56"). See RFC822, sect. 5.
3 NameTemplate is formatted with time.strftime(), with the exception of %s which is replaced by the input into the edit box (which is only shown if necessary). If NameTemplate is not specified or empty, it defaults to %s.

1.5. Writing your own macro

Create a python file called MacroName.py located in your data/plugin/macro directory. Ensure it has a single method called execute(macro, arguments), which is the entry-point.

macro is an instance of class Macro, and also evaluates to a string of the macroname.
arguments is an arbitrary argument string you can pass in with parameters to your macro.

All Macro instances have a request member through which you can access the form parameters and other information related to user interaction.

execute() should use the formatter to construct valid markup for the current target format. In most cases this is HTML, so writing a macro which returns HTML will work in most cases but fail when formats like XML or text/plain are requested.

For example, your wiki page has the following line on it:

[[MacroName(arg1,arg2,arg3)]]

You could write a MacroName.py file like this:

   1 Dependencies = []
   2 
   3 def execute(macro, args):
   4     return macro.formatter.text("I got these args from a macro %s: %s" %
   5     (str(macro), args))

$/!\$ Add an entry into Dependencies if the output from your macro should not be cached. This is important if the macro output could change from one moment to another, for example if your macro searches in wiki pages which may be being edited by other users, or loads information from an external database whose contents may change. Currently the value of any entry does not matter and may be considered a short description for 'why results from this macro should not be cached', but please look at the entries used in other macros for values which may be suitable.