Conflicts/WikiTemplates

Version 2

Created by unknown on Oct 10, 2007 9:23 AM. Last modified by unknown on Oct 10, 2007 9:23 AM.

This page describes the Wiki v2 template system, which lets you adjust the

appearance of your JSPWiki installation without worrying about losing your

changes the next time you update JSPWiki.

If you're looking for ready-made templates, please go to JSPWikiContributedTemplates. If you on the other hand are looking for ideas to implement in your templates, go to JSPWikiWantedTemplates.

TEMPLATES

JSPWiki v2 now supports the concept of "templates" and "skins". These

are actually two different things:

Templates are set by the site administrator. They are a core set

of HTML and JSP files, that define how your site looks. All

templates are located in the JSPWiki/templates/

directory.

Skins are modifications on the basic templates. Each template may

have one or many skins available, and these are chosen by the user.

These are based on stylesheets, and some templates might not support

any skins at all.

JSPWiki comes currently with a single template, called "default".

This is also the template that gets used if no template has been

defined. Unfortunately, the default template has only one "skin".

Rolling your own

To make your own template, just make an another subdirectory in

"templates", copy all the files from the "default" -template, and

modify them at your will.

To specify which template your site should use, just change the

definition of "jspwiki.templateDir" in jspwiki.properties.

More details, aka "OK, here's how it works"

Main JSP pages: Wiki.jsp, Edit.jsp, Preview.jsp, PageInfo.jsp, etc.

JSPWiki has a bunch of main JSP pages. These work as the "Controller"

- they basically control the processing of the request. They take

care of saving your document, or making sure that there are no

concurrent changes, etc. You can modify these files, if you want -

they're written as JSP pages to make your modifications easier.

However, when you upgrade to a new JSPWiki version, you'll need to

modify these pages again.

The main JSP pages will then figure out which template to use, and

will include the appropriate template file, which decides what the

"View" is going to be like.

There are two basic templates: ViewTemplate and EditTemplate.

ViewTemplate gets all requests from any page that does not have to

care about changing the page contents, and EditTemplate gets all those

requests that do.

Each template MUST have both of these files, or else there will be

trouble.

View pages: ViewTemplate.jsp, EditTemplate.jsp

Basically, all you ever need to do is to modify two files to change the look of your Wiki:

ViewTemplate.jsp gets all requests from Wiki.jsp, Preview.jsp,

PageInfo.jsp, etc. Modify this file to change the visual outlook of

your Wiki site, as your average browsing user would see it.

EditTemplate.jsp on the other hand gets all Edit.jsp requests. Modify

this file so that people who edit it get to see stuff.

OK. But we still have a problem: Displaying Page Info is totally

different from showing the rendered text - yes? The other one has

plenty of lists and items, and the other one has nice HTML text. But

they are both handled by ViewTemplate.jsp!

Here's where it gets complicated: The "default" template handles this

by including different content files depending on the Page Request

Context. The Page Request Context basically tells you whether you're

asking for "info", or "diff", or whatever. The default template uses

the CheckRequestContext tag to see which context you're in at the moment,

and includes then a proper "Content" -file.

For example, in an excerpt from the default template:

      <wiki:CheckRequestContext context="view">
         <wiki:Include page="PageContent.jsp" ></wiki:Include>
      </wiki:CheckRequestContext>

This basically means that "if the request context is 'view',

i.e. someone just wanted to see the rendered HTML content, then

include a JSP page called 'PageContent.jsp'". The PageContent.jsp

then just basically says that:

      <wiki:InsertPage ></wiki:InsertPage>

      <wiki:NoSuchPage>
           This page does not exist.  Why don't you go and
           <wiki:EditLink>create it</wiki:EditLink>?
      </wiki:NoSuchPage>

That is: "insert the page content in HTML. If there is no such page,

display a simple note to the user, requesting him to fix this."

So, it's not that difficult. Take a look at "ViewTemplate.jsp" to see

what kind of different request contexts there are, and how to handle

them.

Note that this is just the way the default template does things. Your own template is free to do anything it wants; as long as you provide EditTemplate.jsp and ViewTemplate.jsp, you should be set.

"Content" pages

These are the different "content" pages that are included by

"ViewTemplate.jsp". For example, "PageContent.jsp" displays HTML,

"DiffContent.jsp" displays the diff, etc. You can just easily reuse

these, or do something else.

A clarifying picture


     Wiki.jsp, PageInfo.jsp, etc.
        ==>   templates/<name_of_template>/ViewTemplate.jsp


     Edit.jsp
        ==>   templates/<name_of_template>/EditTemplate.jsp

Structure of the "default" template

     ViewTemplate.jsp
        (Provide basic layout, incl. SearchBox.jsp)
        (Include proper content page)
        ==> PageContent.jsp   (If request was for Wiki.jsp)
        ==> InfoContent.jsp   (If request was for PageInfo.jsp)
        etc.

     EditTemplate.jsp
        (Provide edit page layout)
        (Includes only SearchBox.jsp)

Explanation of the different tags

JSPWiki templates are heavily based on JSP tags. A full explanation of them is available at JSPWikiTags.

For further examples, just look at the default template, since it

basically uses all of the tags. They're not that hard to figure out.

A few Frequently Asked Questions

Problem: Style Sheets

The default template directory contains a small JavaScript file, cssinclude.js,

which attempts to load the right CSS definitions for client browsers. Notice

that this file is template specific; you will need to modify it to use

your template directory, if you have template-specific CSS. Modify this

line (around 28):

document.write("<link rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\"templates/default/"+sheet+"\">");

and replace default with your template dir name.

--[Ebu|ebu]

Problem: Setting CSS classes to change the appearance of links, etc. on page parts

Something I noticed while playing around with templates: if you want a clear contrast between

wiki controls (LeftMenu, the top bar...) and page content, you'd want to be able to make text and links

in various locations use different CSS classes. For example, you might want to render the control areas

with darkish, earthy tones and light text/links, and normal dark-on-white on the content area.

This doesn't seem like a trivial change at the face of it. How could we indicate what css styles to

use in the template files?