Example 1
Our demo web site contains some articles on fictitious countries (this is also the name of their common category).
- DPL Example 007 main page 1 [114 B]
- Nigunda [1 kB]
- Nigunda Test [454 B]
- Somango [663 B]
They all use a template named "Country" which has parameters like capital. The template produces a small table and a link to the country list we want to generate. There are chapters on religion and history in most of the articles. We show how to create a sortable wikitable list of those articles which gives some excerpts of the contents. <javascript src="sorttable"/>
DPL can be used as a mediawiki parser extension, which means that a special DPL tag is used:
parser extension syntax
<DPL>
category=Fictitious country
includepage={Country} dpl,#History,#Religion[20]
addpagecounter=true
mode=userformat
listseparators=¶{|class=sortablewikitable id=123 ¶!Country ¶!Official Name ¶!Capital ¶!Dial Code ¶!History ¶!Religion ¶|-,¶|-¶|[[%PAGE%]] (%COUNT%)¶,¶,¶|}
secseparators=,¶|,,
</DPL>
We select articles by category ("Fictitious Country") and explain that we want to see contents from the template "Country" and from two chapters. We truncate the text on religion to a maximum of 20 characters. We create a sortable table which contains the article name (as a link) and its access frequency in the first column and the content pieces in the other columns. Note that at the end of truncated contents you will find a small arrow which links directly to the chapter from where the contents was taken. The formatting for the template variables is done in a special template which is by convention named after the original template plus a suffix (Template:Country dpl in our case). This template is very simple; it only presents the values for name, capital and dial code as columns of a table.
As wiki syntay depends on line breaks we must use a symbol to represent a line break ("\n" or "¶" are possible) .
country list
| Country | Official Name | Capital | Dial Code | History | Religion |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DPL Example 007 main page 1 (%COUNT%) | |||||
| Nigunda (%COUNT%) | Republic of Nigunda | Bamitogoo | 237 |
some facts about ..→ | |
| Nigunda Test (%COUNT%) | Republic of Nigunda Test | Bamitogoo Test | 237 |
Nigunda Test History - Chapter Sequence in the article doesn´t matter for DPL .. some facts about ..→ | |
| Somango (%COUNT%) | Somango Island | Aaaabququque | 224 |
a text on the history of Somango; a text on the history of Somango; a text on the history of Somango; some facts about ..→ |
country list (2)
DPL can also be used as a mediawiki parser function, which is more powerful as it allows DPL to be used within templates, parameters being template calls or variable expansions. The syntax looks a bit different.
Special care must be taken if you need the pipe symbol ("|") as contents of your statements. This happens for example, when you want to define a wiki table. We offer two ways for that purpose:
- the classic way, i.e. define special macros like (! with a contents of {| (this is common practice in wikipedia).
- use the special symbol ¦; this symbol looks very similar to the pipe character and is therefore more elegant.
See two examples (with identical results) to understand the difference:
| parser function syntax with \n and macros | parser function syntax with ¶ and ¦ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
{{#dpl:category=Fictitious country
|includepage={Country} dpl,#History[80 img=pointing.hand.gif],#Religion
|addpagecounter=true
|mode=userformat
|listseparators=\n{{(!}} class=sortablewikitable id=123
\n!Country
\n!Official Name
\n!Capital
\n!Dial Code
\n!History
\n!Religion
\n{{!}}-,\n{{!-}}\n{{!}}[[%PAGE%]] (%COUNT%)\n,\n,\n{{!)}}
|secseparators=,\n{{!}},,
}}
The result:
|
{{#dpl:category=Fictitious country
|includepage={Country} dpl,#History[80 img=pointing.hand.gif],#Religion
|addpagecounter=true
|mode=userformat
|listseparators=¶{¦ class=sortablewikitable id=123
¶!Country
¶!Official Name
¶!Capital
¶!Dial Code
¶!History
¶!Religion
¶¦-,¶¦-¶¦[[%PAGE%]] (%COUNT%)¶,¶,¶¦}
|secseparators=,¶¦,,
}}
The result:
|
Have a look at a more realistic example ...
