nspages Plugin

If your Dokuwiki instance is older than the release “Igor - 2022-07-31” you should use the version available here (and NOT update it afterward), because subsequent versions of the plugin won't be compatible)

This plugin nicely displays a table of content of the pages -and optionally the subnamespaces- of a given (sub)namespace.

If you're discovering this plugin and want to have a glimpse at what you can do with it, the first section, which shows some common usages, is made for you

If you're interested in understanding all the options, in order to use it to best fit your needs, you may want to jump directly to the 2nd section.

Using this plugin is easy: just write

<nspages>

(You may also use the button from the toolbar.)

You will get a list of your pages displayed in columns, like this:

If you're interested in the list of the namespaces instead of the list of pages, try this:

<nspages -subns -nopages>

Now let's do something more colorful: if you have pictures in your pages you can do this:

<nspages -usePictures>

it will represent each page using their first picture, like this:

One last example: instead of displaying the content of a single namespace, let's display a hierarchy of pages as a tree. For the hype, let's use a whole bunch of options together (you can look at the next section in order to understand what each of those option does):

<nspages -tree -r -exclude -subns -pagesInNs -h1 -textNs="All my content as a tree!">

Bam, you get a tree like this:

This was just to get you started. This plugin is highly configurable and has a lot more features we haven't mentioned yet (other ways to display pages, to filter out some pages, to display pages with another order, …). The next section gives all the details

The general syntax is

<nspages path_to_a_namespace -option1 -option2 ...>

where:

• path_to_a_namespace represents the path to the wanted namespace. It can be an absolute (ex: namespace1:subnamespace) or a relative path (ex: .:subnamespace). If no path is specified, the current namespace is selected.
• -option may be one of the following (it is possible to specify several options):

-subns

-nopages

-exclude:nameOfPage

-exclude:subNs:

-exclude

-h1

-textPages="some text"

-textNS="some text"

-title

-simpleList

-numberedList

-simpleLine

-simpleLineBreak

-usePictures

-tree

<nspages -r -subns -nopages -tree>

-nbCol=3

-sortId

-reverse

-naturalOrder

-sortByDate

-displayModificationDates

-sortByCreationDate

-pagesInNs

-r

-exclude:[page1 subNs: page2]

-pregPagesOn
-pregPagesOff
-pregNSOn
-pregNSOff

-pregPagesTitleOn
-pregPagesTitleOff
-pregNsTitleOn
-pregNsTitleOff

-anchorName=myName

-actualTitle

-actualTitle=n

-idAndTitle

-nbItemsMax=n

-hideNoPages

-hideNoSubns

-defaultPicture

-defaultPicture="{{:my:picture.png}}"

-defaultPicture="https://some/picture.png"

-showhidden

-dictionaryOrder="<locale>"

-dictionaryOrder="sk_SK"

-customTitle="[{date.created}] {title} by {user}"

-includeItemsInTOC

-sortByMetadata="date.created"

-sidebar

ex: <nspages path_to_a_namespace -exclude> or <nspages -subns -nopages> will work.

Search and install the plugin using the Extension Manager. Refer to Plugins on how to install plugins manually.

(Because the array above is too concise to give all the details about this option)

This option accepts a string as an argument. The name of the pages will be displayed using this format. The {xxx} part are replaced by the metadata of the page.

For instance

<nspages :my-namespace -customTitle="[{date.created}] {title} by {user}">

could display:

• [1613513556] <Title of page 1> by Stancu
• [1624663245] <Title of page 2> by Guillaume

Some important details about this option:

• Nspages will render by default only the metadata title, user, and date.created. Admins can configure it to accept more metadata. The reason to not allow everything by default is to ensure this feature won't leak private information (for instance allowing to display the IP of the editors would be a bad idea on a public wiki)
• The list of metadata available by default in Dokuwiki is available in the documentation
• It can be use along with other plugins that adds support for custom metadatas (like the meta plugin). (Don't forget to add those other metadata in the accept-list of nspages)

DokuWiki supports sidebars out of the box.

Here is an example of sidebar generated with nspages:

To get this sidebar I just put

<nspages -simpleList -h1 -sidebar>

on the page :sidebar of my instance of DokuWiki.

The tricky part is that since I do not specify a namespace then I expect nspages to consider the namespace of the current page. But by default nspages will consider that the current page is :sidebar (because it is where it is defined), whereas want makes sense to me is that the current page is interpreted as the page that I'm currently browsing.

That's the point of the -sidebar option. In practice it:

• tells nspages that the “current page” should be interpreted as the page currently browsed
• does not cache the resolution of the resolution of the namespace (because it may change at every page that I browse)

(a consequence is that it makes no sense to both specify a namespace and have the -sidebar option, so that case will just display an error)

To put it in a nutshell: it you use nspages to generate a sidebar, then you should add the -sidebar option

• With version older than 2014-08-10, you should put ~~NOCACHE~~ in the pages where you use this plugin, to make sure that if you create or remove a page in the namespace, it will be taken into account. Now, nspages automatically deactivate the cache on the pages where it is used (you can deactivate this behaviour on the admin panel).
• The CSS sheet should be taken into account in order for this plugin to work correctly; but because of the cache system it may not be the case the first time you use this plugin (even if ~~NOCACHE~~ is specified). The easier way to resolve this is to make sure your cache is invalidated by touching conf/local.php (eg. by resaving your configuration)
• Currently, you may not use a > in the -textPages and -textNS options, since it is understood as the end of the <nspages> tag
• When you change the default markup inserted by the toolbar button (throught the admin dashboard), you may need to purge your caches to have this change taken into effect (see also the bug report):
  • Clean the cache of you DokuWiki
  • Force your browser to reload it's cache, typically by pressing Ctrl+F5, or Shift+F5

nspages is a personal open source project started in 2008. I have put hundreds of hours to maintain and enhance it.

It is provided as a charityware. It can be downloaded and installed at no charge. If you found it useful and would like to support its development, you may make a donation to a non-profit charitable organization.

Any NGO acting for the environment.

Forwarding me (address available at the top of the page) the confirmation email you send or receive will ensure your kind gesture will motivate me to continue developing this software.

Making sure you have a positive impact would already be awesome:

• Volunteer to an NGO near you. Give some of your time
• Reduce your meat and plane consumption
• Ride your bike instead of taking your car
• Use a reusable bag and stop using plastic straws
• Plant trees
• Take only what you need, not what you can