Hierarchy-specific PageTemplates

[anonymous]

The PageTemplates feature uses:

wiki pages having a name starting with PageTemplates/

as templates.

And the default selection:

will be blank page, or DefaultPage if PageTemplates/DefaultPage exists.

What's missing are templates that are only relevant to certain page hierarchy path prefixes, and a default template for those. For example when creating the page wiki:Machines/NewMachine the templates under wiki:Machines/PageTemplates should also be available. and wiki:Machines/PageTemplates/DefaultPage (or at least wiki:PageTemplates/Machines/DefaultPage) should be the default.

[Ryan J Ollos]

Let's say you have a multi-level hierarchy with templates under Machines/PageTemplates but no templates under Machines/MachineGroup/PageTemplates and you are creating Machine/MachineGroup/NewMachine. Should the list of templates from the parent page (Machines/PageTemplates) be shown?

I don't think there's a good general answer to that question. I can also think of other patterns that might be useful, like customizing the templates based on the permission group that a user is a member of. What we might be able to do is provide an extension point for customizing the page templates.

[anonymous]

Replying to Ryan J Ollos:

Let's say you have a multi-level hierarchy with templates under Machines/PageTemplates but no templates under Machines/MachineGroup/PageTemplates and you are creating Machine/MachineGroup/NewMachine. Should the list of templates from the parent page (Machines/PageTemplates) be shown?

I would say ideally yes, but not showing it would also be acceptable.

I don't think there's a good general answer to that question. I can also think of other patterns that might be useful, like customizing the templates based on the permission group that a user is a member of. What we might be able to do is provide an extension point for customizing the page templates.

That also sounds good I think.

[anonymous]

I'm actually not sure if it's worth it.

[Ryan J Ollos]

Yeah, I started working on a patch somewhat similar to yours and also started questioning the complexity.

It might make sense to implement the original suggestion, with the following behavior: From a child page, search up the hierarchy and check each parent for a PageTemplates sibling. So page /A/B/C would use page templates from /A/B/PageTemplates, if it exists, otherwise /A/PageTemplates, otherwise /PageTemplates.

I would first extract get_templates_names and get_page_template methods on the class, before adding the additional complexity. I think the code will be more clear and it will be easier to test. If you create the patch and there are no objects from other developers I will make sure it lands in Trac 1.4.

[Ryan J Ollos]

Milestone renamed