[pmwiki-users] $EditFunctions / $EditFields

tamouse mailing lists tamouse.lists at gmail.com
Fri Mar 9 13:00:58 CST 2012


On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 11:32 PM,  <cguenette at globetrotter.net> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I found the http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/Functions page and
> the http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/Variables page. I also notice the
> http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/ModuleGuidelines (not usefull to
> begin...) and the PmWiki Internals PmWiki Developer categories.
>
> But this is very confusing. The only way I can figure out something for now
> is by looking existing recipes and by trying to understand / copiing
> lines... With a lot of searching, I finally understand who
> to use $EditFunctionse. I also put a lot of echo and print_r in code to have
> cues but this is really painfull.
>
> How do YOU begins to write recipe for PmWiki?


Hi, Caroline,

First off, I have to admit I have not written a completely new recipe
for PmWiki (yet!). I have taken some of the existing ones, however,
and modified them to fit my needs. I am currently in the throws of
starting to write a completely new recipe that I can use to capture
entire web pages (with images and links) to use as a clipping service
(something similar to how I use Evernote today, but store in my wikis
instead).

For me, it starts off with an idea of something I want to do in my
wiki. First I scan as many of the existing recipes in the cookbook
that I can, and start to pull together ideas of how I might implement
what I want using the recipes as is, simply changing configurations if
at all possible.

If I can't find exactly what I need, I look for something close, get
the source, and put the source in a subdirectory of my Projects
folder. The first thing I do is check that into a repository so I have
a base to start from. Then I create a branch, and start making changes
as I need to, testing the changes on a local version of my wiki.

Once I'm satisfied that the branch is what I want, thoroughly tested
on my local system, I merge the branch back into the trunk. Then I
upload the new version of the recipe to my staging server, and test
again in that environment (duplicate of my producgtion environment).
Once I'm satisfied that's all working, I go ahead and upgrade
production and test that.

As far as other aspects of writing a new recipe, I am following the
guidelines in http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/ModuleGuidelines for
structuring the subdirectories and files for the recipe, using the
"Simpler Packaging Method" at this point.

To develop a recipe for PmWiki, I feel one should have a very firm
grasp on PHP development. PmWiki is a pretty great example of PHP
coding, but if you don't know how to design and write software, and do
not understand how to write PHP code, hacking out even a simple recipe
is going to be quite difficult, I think. The best recipes make
meticulous use of the existing structures and idioms built into
PmWiki, and it takes (I feel) quite a bit of study to understand them.



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