[dokuwiki] Re: writing a syntax plugin

domas wrote:

Hi,
I am trying to grasp development of dokuwiki plugins and have a few
questions:

if I wanted to write a container plugin with a more complex syntax:
<blockA>
<A>aaa</A>
<B>bbb</B>
</blockA>
is it better to add a single special pattern <blockA>.+?</blockA> or
have entry, exit and internal patterns?
That depends on whether you wish to allow other syntax modes within your own syntax. If you do, then it is better to use entry, exit and internal patterns. The only other alternative is to instantiate a second parser to process the data you aren't interested in. Doing so would be resource expensive and may be difficult to handle, especially when you take into account the protected modes. 


Is there perhaps an example of such a plugin - I spent half an hour
searching but couldn't find anything.


Try the list plugins.


And, continuing the topic of complex syntaxes, can a plugin store
information, collected during multiple handle(...) calls, when rendering
a single page? Like collect all the items in <blockA>, process them
(e.g. sort) and only then render.
Theoretically. If you look in the handler (inc/parser/handler.php) you'll find a nested syntax class. iirc footnotes makes use of it. A plugin should be able to make use of the same system. Implementation may be a little more tricky as its not as straightforward for a plugin to write its own instructions AND to avoid DW having writing plugin instructions.
Aside - I've always felt the plugin handler() method should be able to return a value that tells its caller not to write an instruction. It may even be relatively painless to add that functionality without disrupting existing plugin behaviour. 



Thanks in advance,
Domas




--
DokuWiki mailing list - more info at
http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:mailinglist

Other related posts: