Help:DPL/Parameters: Controlling output format

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Manual Parameters Controlling output format

You can select one of several default formats or define your own format (mode=userformat); output can be grouped in columns or rows.

In the examples that follow, the DPL output has been kept small to reduce page load time and page size, most notably using titlematch, nottitlematch, count, and includesubpages=false.

General approach to output formatting

The general approach to output formatting is two-fold:

  1. There are a couple of simple predefined output formats which generate lists of articles.
    You will understand their meaning directly from reading.
  2. There is a mode called userformat which puts complete control into your hands.
    This is somewhat complicated.

While the standard output formats are meant to be used for fast generation of simple page lists, the userformat approach aims at transcluding contents from other pages and requires some effort to understand. There is a system of three tags which are used to enclose (a) the whole output, (b) each item, (c) each transcluded section of an item. A fourth tag is used to separate values between items of one section which occur more than once.

We assume that we have two documents which use templates x and y with varying arguments; while x is being used once within each document, y is used several times. In very short notation the structure might look as follows: 

 A: x(a) y(3) y(5)
 B: x(b) y(4) y(1) y(2)

The following DPL parameters are used to define a set of tags which are used to construct the output:

The arguments of the above statements can contain references to %VARIABLES%. So sec-1-start might contain a reference like %PAGE% to output the page name. See format for more details on variable substitution.

Now think of the following page inclusion statement: 

  includepage={x}.dpl,{y}.dpl

The output will then look like this: 

  liststart
     itemstart
        sec-1-start
           x.dpl(a)
        sec-1-end
        sec-2-start
           y.dpl(3)
           multi-sep
           y.dpl(5)
        sec-2-end
     itemend
     itemstart
        sec-1-start
           x.dpl(b)
        sec-1-end
        sec-2-start
           y.dpl(4)
           multi-sep
           y.dpl(1)
           multi-sep
           y.dpl(2)
        sec-2-end
     itemend
  listend

Assuming that the tags (liststart, itemstart, etc.) contain wiki syntax for table definitions and multi-sep defines a horizontal line, the output might look like this: 

  +------+---------------------+
  |      |          | y.dpl(3) |
  |  A   | x.dpl(a) |  ----    |
  |      |          | y.dpl(5) |
  +------+----------+----------+
  |      |          | y.dpl(4) |
  |      |          |  ----    |
  |  B   | x.dpl(b) | y.dpl(1) |
  |      |          |  ----    |
  |      |          | y.dpl(2) |
  +------+----------+----------+

In some situations, however, you may want to create an output table where each of the calls of template y is used to create a separate output row. Using a sortable table you could then easily rearrange the output. 

  +------+---------------------+       +------+---------------------+
  |  A   | x.dpl(a) | y.dpl(1) |       |  B   | x.dpl(b) | y.dpl(1) |
  +------+---------------------+       +------+---------------------+
  |  A   | x.dpl(a) | y.dpl(2) |       |  B   | x.dpl(b) | y.dpl(2) |
  +------+---------------------+       +------+---------------------+
  |  B   | x.dpl(b) | y.dpl(3) |       |  A   | x.dpl(a) | y.dpl(3) |
  +------+---------------------+       +------+---------------------+
  |  B   | x.dpl(b) | y.dpl(4) |       |  A   | x.dpl(a) | y.dpl(4) |
  +------+---------------------+       +------+---------------------+
  |  B   | x.dpl(b) | y.dpl(5  |       |  B   | x.dpl(b) | y.dpl(5) |
  +------+---------------------+       +------+---------------------+

There is a special parameter called dominantsection which you can use to mark one section of your includepage statement as "dominant" (in our example: dominantsection=2 as {y}.dpl is the second argument of our includepage statement). You can only have one dominant section in a DPL statement. Marking a section as "dominant" only makes sense if you have multiple calls of the same template (or multiple chapters with the same heading) in your documents. Each piece of content in the dominant section will generate an individual output row with the values of all other columns being repeated.

As all of the above is not very easy to understand there are additional DPL commands (table, tablerow) which make it fairly easy to create tabular output.

Setting the basic output mode

mode

mode Provide basic control over the output of DPL.

Syntax:

mode=modename

modename can be one of:

unordered
outputs an unordered list — HTML tag ul — (default)
ordered
outputs an ordered list — HTML tag ol
none
outputs a list using newlines and HTML tags br/ to separate each item
inline
outputs a list using symbols defined by the inlinetext parameter to separate items
category
outputs resulting articles in a way category-pages are shown (you must use ordermethod= title / titlewithoutnamespace / category,title / user,title with this option!)
userformat
will leave output control completely to the user;
see parameters listseparators and secseparators; in this mode DPL offers built-in variables which must be referenced in the output format description provided by the user. mode=userformat is quite important to have complete control over the output.

For advanced use of DPL it is important to understand mode=userformat. Note that this mode is automatically implied when listseparators= or format= are used.

mode 'ordered', 'unordered', 'none' (Example1)

These create abbreviated lists of Category:DPL pages:

In an <ol>...</ol> list: In a <ul>...</ul> list: In a <br> list: 
<dpl>
  category=DPL
  titlematch=%o%
  nottitlematch=%nt%|%ow%|%ec%
  mode=ordered
</dpl>

<dpl>
  category=DPL
  titlematch=%o%
  nottitlematch=%nt%|%ow%|%ec%
  mode=unordered
</dpl>

<dpl>
  category=DPL
  titlematch=%o%
  nottitlematch=%nt%|%ow%|%ec%
  mode=none
</dpl>
  1. Help:DPL/Compatibility
  2. Help:DPL/Example: Related to article

mode 'category' (Example2)

<dpl>
  titlematch=%Help%
  includesubpages=false
  mode=category
  ordermethod=titlewithoutnamespace
</dpl>

This list will output pages that have 'Help' in their name; pages will be ordered by their name regardless of category, the output will be shown in category style (i.e. with chapter capitals).

A

C

E

H

M

W


Related configuration option (see Extension:DynamicPageList3 on MediaWiki Wiki: $wgDPL2CategoryStyleListCutoff.

mode 'inline'

inlinetext
inlinetext To define the inline text used in mode=inline.

Syntax:

inlinetext=wikitext, with wikitext as some wiki text; default is &nbsp;-&nbsp; except for mode=userformat where inlinetext is empty by default.

If you want normal "breaking spaces" (and not the NON-breaking spaces) you should use &#32-&#32.

Extra whitespaces are stripped by DPL from the beginning and end of wikitext. If you want to show one or multiple spaces, use one or multiple &nbsp;, or use 'nowiki' tags  -  which has the same effect as &nbsp;-&nbsp;.

Bullets can be displayed with either &bull; or {{*}}.

Example: 

<dpl>
  category	= Help
  includesubpages= false
  count		= 10
  mode		= inline
  inlinetext	= &nbsp; &bull; &nbsp;
</dpl>

This list outputs pages that have Category:Help shown like Item1 • Item2 • Item3 • ...

mode 'userformat'

listseparators
listseparators (alias for format) see the format parameter. Implicitly sets mode=userformat.
format
format customize the output format completely. Implicitly sets mode=userformat. Uses variable references like %PAGE% to describe the output format. See also the secseparators parameter.

Note1: listseparators is an alias for format.

Note2: the format command is very flexible but somewhat complicated. If you want to create tabular output, you should have a look at the table command.

Syntax:

format=Startall,Start,End,Endall

Startall, Start, End and Endall are wiki tags used to separate the list items.

  • Startall and Endall define an outer frame for the whole list.
  • Start and End build an inner frame for each article item.

Because wiki syntax depends on newline characters, \n or must be used to explicitly insert newline characters into the output.

As we want to be able to control output completely, we reference article names and other possible output by special %VARIABLES%:

  • %NR% = the current article sequence number (starting from 1)
  • %PAGE% = the name of the article (including namespace)
  • %PAGEID% = the internal unique numeric ID of the arFticle page
  • %IMAGE% = the physical path to an image (based on hash values, e.g. 5/5d/myImage.jpg)
  • %PAGESEL% = the name of a page which was used within the selection criteria (only applies to linksfrom and linksto)
  • %IMAGESEL% = the name of an image which was used within the selection criteria (only applies to imageused)
  • %TITLE% = the title of the page (without the namespace)
  • %NAMESPACE% = the namespace of the page
  • %DATE% = the date selected, eg. lastedit; requires addeditdate=true or similar; the formatting of the date can be influenced using userdateformat=
  • %USER% = the user who changed the document last; requires adduser=true
  • %CATLIST% = a pipe-separated list of links to all categories to which the article belongs (requires addcategories=true)
  • %CATBULLETS% = a bullet point list of links to all categories to which the article belongs (requires addcategories=true)
  • %CATNAMES% = a comma-separated list of all categories to which the article belongs (requires addcategories=true)
  • %REVISION% = the name of the revision of the article; only accessible if the DPL query is based on revisions
  • %EDITSUMMARY% = the change log message of a revision; only accessible if the DPL query is based on revisions
  • %EXTERNALLINK% = the external hyperlink found as a consequence of the linkstoexternal statement

These variables will be replaced by the corresponding values if they occur within Start or End or within the corresponding tags of the secseparators= parameter.

In addition there are some symbolic variables which can ONLY be used in resultsheader and resultsfooter:

  • %PAGES% = number of articles in the result set
  • %TOTALPAGES% = total number of articles in the result set, regardless of count limits; will only be calculated if used
  • %VERSION% = the current DPL version
  • %DPLTIME% = contains the amount of time (in seconds + milliseconds) spent within DPL; this can be helpful if you observe slow response times for wiki pages that contain DPL statements. Example: 2 (2009/06/13 09:27:43) would mean that DPL spent two seconds of the whole response time, starting at the time given in brackets.
  • %FIRSTNAMESPACE%, %FIRSTTITLE%, %LASTNAMESPACE%, %LASTTITLE% = namespace and title of the first / last article in the result set; the information is intended to be used for page scrolling
  • %SCROLLDIR% = set by the URL parameter DPL_scrollDir; it is passed to the scroll helper template which uses it to produce its links for scrolling

For example, the classical default output of DPL can also be produced with the following statements:

default formatted 
<dpl>
  titlematch	  = %Help%
  nottitlematch	  = %o%
  includesubpages = false
</dpl>

<dpl>
  titlematch	  = %Help%
  nottitlematch	  = %o%
  includesubpages = false
  format	  = ,\n* [[%PAGE%]],,
</dpl>

Note that a bullet point list in wiki syntax is defined by a * at the beginning of a line — therefore we have to use a special symbol \n or to refer to the beginning of a new line of wiki text. Replace the * with a # and you will get a numbered list. Startall and Endall are empty (note that we start with a comma, note the two commas at the end), the Start tag is used to create a new line with an initial * followed by the page name, written as a link. That's all.

Creating a top-five hitlist with access rates and bold article names of varying size could be done like this: 

<dpl>
  category	 = Help
  ordermethod	 = counter
  order		 = descending
  addpagecounter = true
  count		 = 5
  format	 = ,\n%COUNT%  --- <font size="%COUNTFS%">'''[[%PAGE%]]'''</font>,<br/>,
</dpl>

However, addpagecounter, ordermethod=counter, %COUNT%, and %COUNTFS% were removed in MediaWiki 1.25.
Below is an example of how to use %NR% to set the font size. 

<dpl>
  category	 = Help
  order		 = descending
  addpagecounter = true
  count		 = 4
  format	 = ,\n<font size="%NR%">'''[[%PAGE%]]'''</font>,<br/>,
</dpl>

Help:Schedule
Help:Character Intersection
Help:Talk Page
Help:Episode Quotes

You can also use HTML syntax for the tags, although this is discouraged. 

<dpl>
  linksto  = DPL
  format   = <ul type="disc">,<li>[[%PAGE%]],</li>,</ul>
</dpl>


Now let us create a table using wiki syntax: 

<dpl>
  linksto  = DPL
  format   = {| class="wikitable"¶!pages found,¶|-¶|[[%PAGE%]],,¶|}
</dpl>

We use Startall to define the table header and Endall for the footer. Each article is presented in a table row using wiki syntax for table layout.


We could also produce image galleries: 

<dpl>
  namespace = File
  category  = Hydra images|Template images
  count	    = 6
  format    = <gallery widths=20px heights=20px>,%PAGE%\n,,</gallery>
</dpl>


secseparators
secseparators customize the output format of included sections. Can be used with standard output modes and with mode=userformat.

Syntax:

secseparators=Start1,End1,Start2,End2,..,..

or

secseparators=Start

Please note that the semantics of this parameter have changed with version 0.9.6!. When upgrading to 0.9.6 it will probably be necessary to change the secseparators statements.

In the first syntax variant, specify pairs of tags which correspond to the includepage statement. StartN and EndN are HTML strings or wiki tags which will be put around each transcluded section (see includepage=name1,name2,...).

In the second syntax variant, specify just one element which will then be used as StartN for all sections; in this case the second tag (EndN) will be empty for all transcluded sections.

Symbolic replacements of %PAGE% etc. take place as described in listseparators. In addition, the variable %SECTION% can be used to refer to the section found (works only for chapter headings).

If the same section occurs more than once in an article (or an article includes the same template more than once) all such occurences will be transcluded as a block and the secseparators tags will only be put once around the whole block (but see dominantsection).

Example
<dpl>
  titlematch     = DPL3/d%
  ignorecase     = true
  linksto        = Extension:DPL3/Manual
  listseparators = {|class="dpl secsep"¶!Pages found¶!Syntax¶!Example,¶|-¶|[[%PAGE%|%TITLE%]],,¶|}
  includepage    = #Syntax,##Example.*
  secseparators  = ¶|,,¶|,,
  count          = 2
</dpl>

Use listseparators to define a table with three columns and put a link to the article in the first column of each row. Use secseparators to add more columns for each section found. There are two pairs for each transcluded section; the first element of each pair is a linefeed and a pipe (which define a new column in the table) and the second element of each pair is empty. Have a careful look at the symbols (\n can be used as an alternative). They always appear before a wiki syntax element which must be placed at the beginning of a new line. Thus, make sure that the wiki parser will understand them. Note: if an article does not contain a section named "Example", it will result in an empty cell in the table.

As mentioned above, a single element can be used in the secseparators statement in order to apply this as a start tag to all transcluded sections; so it could have also been written:

Example 2
<dpl>
  titlematch     = DPL3/d%
  ignorecase     = true
  linksto        = Extension:DPL3/Manual
  listseparators = {|class="dpl secsep"\n!Pages found\n!Syntax\n!Example,\n|-\n|[[%PAGE%|%TITLE%]],,\n|}
  includepage    = #Syntax[84],##Example.*[180 more..]
  secseparators  = \n|
  count          = 3
</dpl>

Assuming that the chapters on Syntax and Example contain long texts, they can be truncated (eg. to 84 or 180 characters). A link which refers directly to those chapters will be generated automatically if needed. Be aware that truncating with [ ]can break text formatted with wikitext or tags such as <nowiki>.


multisecseparators
multisecseparators put a tag between multiple transcluded parts which refer to the same template or chapter.

Syntax:

multisecseparators=sep1,sep2,...

The tags correspond to the transcluded section (see includepage=name1,name2,...).

Symbolic replacements of %PAGE% etc. take place as described in listseparators. In addition, the variable %SECTION% can be used to refer to the section found (works only for chapter headings). It will give you the precise name of each heading even if you used a regular expression (double ##) in the include statement.

If an article uses the same template more than once you will get all references with sepN as a separator.

Example: 

<dpl>
  titlematch	    = DPL%
  nottitlematch	    = %volume%|%page selection%
  uses		    = Template:DPL Parameter
  include	    = {dpl manual}:[[%PAGE%|%TITLE%]],{dpl parameter}:name:purpose[50]
  mode		    = userformat
  listseparators    = ¶{|class="wikitable sortable" ¶!colspan=3|Fields cannot be formatted within the include¶|-¶!Page ¶!Name ¶!Purpose,¶|-,¶|-¶|class="dpl blue-background" colspan=3|¶|-,¶|}
  secseparators	    = ¶|,,¶|class="dpl dark-background"|,
  multisecseparators= ,\n|-¶|¶|class="dpl light-background"|
</dpl>
Values cannot be formatted within include, as formatting can only occur in formatting statements (in these examples listseparators, secseparators, and multisecseparators). %VARIABLES% can be omitted from the include, and instead be placed in these formatting statements, for further formatting.

We can achieve some field formatting by changing some of the above dpl statements: 

 include	= {dpl manual}:%TITLE%,{dpl parameter}:name:purpose[50]
 listseparators = ¶{|class="wikitable sortable" ¶!colspan=3|Fields... secseparators¶|-¶!Page ¶!Name ¶!Purpose,¶|-,¶|-¶|class="dpl blue-background" colspan=3|¶|-,¶|}
 secseparators  = ¶|[[%PAGE%|{{#explode:,|:|1}}]],¶|class="dpl dark-background"|,

 include	= {dpl manual}:,{dpl parameter}:name:purpose[50]
 listseparators = ¶{|class="wikitable sortable" ¶!colspan=3|%VARIABLES%... listseparators¶|-¶!Page ¶!Name ¶!Purpose,¶|-¶|[[%PAGE%|{{#explode:%TITLE%|:|1}}]],¶|-¶|class="dpl blue-background" colspan=3|¶|-,¶|}
 secseparators  = ,,¶|class="dpl dark-background"|,,¶|,
Formatting handled by a phantom template (eg. Template:DPL_parameter/dpl) will apply to both secseparators and multisecseparators.
If separate formatting is required, it needs to be assigned to their respective parameters (as shown below).
To prevent truncated words, see Template:DPL_parameter_dpl.nowordbreak (which uses Template:nowordbreak). 
  titlematch	    = DPL%
  nottitlematch	    = %volume%|%page selection%
  uses		    = Template:DPL Parameter
  include	    = {dpl manual}:,{DPL parameter} dpl
  mode		    = userformat
  listseparators    = ¶{|class="wikitable sortable" ¶!colspan=3|Includes a phantom template¶|-¶!Page ¶!Name ¶!Purpose,¶|-¶|[[%PAGE%|{{#explode:%TITLE%|:|1}}]],¶|-¶|class="dpl blue-background" colspan=3|¶|-,¶|}
  secseparators	    = ,,¶|class="dpl dark-background"|,,¶|,
  multisecseparators= ,\n|-¶|¶|class="dpl light-background"|

As you can see, the results resemble the list generated on the title page of this manual, whose dpl is as follows: 

<dpl>
  nottitlematch=%volume%|%page selection%
  namespace = Help
  uses = Template:DPL parameter
  mode = userformat
  replaceintitle = @DPL Manual/@,
  include = {DPL Manual}:[[%PAGE%|%TITLE%]],{DPL parameter}/dpl
  listseparators={|class=wikitable,\n|-\n|,,\n|}
  secseparators=,,\n|\n{|class="wikitable sortable" width=100%\n!width=140px|name\n!purpose\n|-\n|,\n|}
  multisecseparators=,\n|-\n|
  allowcachedresults = true
</dpl>


See also Test article structure.

dominantsection
dominantsection define a section with multiple occurrences as dominant, i.e. each piece of contents of this section (which is associated with a template call or a chapter within the original document) will create a separate output line.

Syntax:

dominantsection=number between 1 and the number of arguments in your includepage= statement

If there is only 0 or 1 piece of contents for the dominant section you will see no difference from normal DPL behaviour.

Example:

See the explanations at the top of this document to understand the meaning of dominantsection.

Note: Using dominantsection together with table may lead to strange result formatting.

Generating tabular output

table

table a simple syntax to create standard tabular output; see also tablerow

Syntax:

table=tableatr, linkheader, (column headlines) ..

The table statement is a shortcut which implicitly sets certain values for other DPL parameters, namely mode, listseparators / format, secseparators, and multisecseparators.

The layout is less flexible than the individual use of all of the above parameters but will probably be sufficient in many cases, especially when used together with tablerow.

If you use table in a DPL statement, it does not make sense to use one of the other options mentioned because their values will be overwritten without notice. There is one exception of this rule: It can make sense to specify the THIRD argument for format in combination with table. Therefore this parameter is NOT overwritten by the table command. The third argument can be used to output meta data like %COUNT%, %USER% etc. as columns in an output table. If you want to do so, the third parameter must contain wiki syntax for output columns like this: 

include = {some template}:parm1,#some heading
table   =,,tplparm,chapter,#hits
format  =,,\n%COUNT%

Do not forget to escape the '|' symbol if your DPL statement uses parser function syntax. You will get a table which contains template parameters, chapter contents and the usage counter as a third column. Meta data can only be placed AFTER normal contents as we use the THIRD parameter of the format statement.

The use of table requires an include statement which should, for reasons of readability, directly precede the table statement). Each argument of the include statement will produce one or more columns in the output table described in the table statement.

table expects a comma-separated list of parameters:

  • The first parameter will be used to describe general parameters for the table
    • it is recommended to make a CSS reference here, using something like class=wikitable or class=mytable if mytable is defined in the Mediawiki:Common.css document.
    • class=wikitable is the default value. Use double-quotes to specify multiple classes, e.g., class="wikitable sortable".
  • The second parameter is the headline for the first column.
    • The first column will automatically contain a reference to the article, so something like Article should be o.k.
    • Article is the default value.
    • if you use a single - (dash), the column with the hyperlink to the article will be suppressed. You can supply a hyperlink to the article in any other column if you use [[{{{%PAGE%}}}|{{{%TITLE%}}}]] within a phantom template.
  • All subsequent parameters are column headings which correspond to the arguments of the include parameter. Note that if you call a phantom template (like {Some Template}.dpl) in the include statement, you will have to provide as many headlines as the phantom template produces columns.
  • mode will be set to userformat
  • listseparators will be configured to produce wiki syntax which defines a table
  • secseparators will be configured to produce wiki syntax which creates a table row. The first column will always contain a hyperlink to the article of the query result (except you set the link header to '-' as described above.
  • multisecseparators will be configured to produce wiki syntax which creates another table row for multiple occurences of the first include argument. For all other arguments a linebreak will be used if we are dealing with template parameters and a horizontal separation line will be used when dealing with chapter contents. The background for this is the following: If you have an article which calls the same template several times, you may want to have a table where each template invocation becomes a row in your table.

When using phantom templates (i.e. templates which are called during DPL execution instead of the original template) they must be written to produce output according to wiki table syntax. When entering such a template we are already at the beginning of a column (i.e. a preceding line with a | has already been put into the output stream). So start directly with the contents of the first column. To add more columns use a | in a separate line. Example: 

   some output for the first column: {{{1|}}}
   |
   some output for the next column: {{{2|}}}
   |
   some output for the next column: {{{3|}}}

It may sound complicated, but is a huge improvement compared to the native use of mode, listseparators, secseparators and multisecseparators.

A typical DPL statement using the table parameter would contain: 

include =                          #Chapter X,{T1}:parm1,#Chapter Y,{T2}.dpl
table   = class=sortable, Article,      X    ,     t-p  ,     Y    , T2-a, T2-b

Note that we have written the above statement in a way to show the correspondence between include and table. You can see the first two parameters which define the table characteristics and a headline for the hyperlink to the article. Then follow headlines for each argument of include. Note that there are TWO headlines which correspond to the last argument of the include statement (assuming that Template:T2.dpl outputs TWO columns). Template:T2 itself might have more or less than 2 arguments -- it only matters how many columns are output by Template:T2.dpl).

Now look at the examples

"tablerow"

tablerow a simple syntax to create customized tabular output; see also table

Syntax:

tablerow=coldef, ..

Where coldef contains wiki code which uses the symbol '%%' to refer to the corresponding element of an include statement.

The table statement (which must be used as a prerequisite for tablerow) cares for the basics of table generation. So, when you define a column definition, you only need to specify the code for the field contents itself. You can start with field attributes like "bgcolor" or skip them. You can add a leading \n or to make sure that the field contents are displayed correctly if it contains wiki syntax that depends on linebreaks (e.g. enumeration list). You must specify all columns. i.e. you must have as many entries in the tablerow statement as there are columns in your table. Skipping a column would suppress output for that column completely.

The tablerow command is best explained by an example: 

<dpl>
  category=Help
  titlematch=DPL%
  count=4
  includepage ={DPL Manual}:section,%-1[25]
  table       =,Title,Sub Title,Last Section (25 chars)
  tablerow    =style="text-align:center;background-color:lightyellow;"|%%,|%%,
</dpl>
Title Sub Title Last Section (25 chars)
DPL

The following example includes the use of addpagecounter and %COUNT%, both of which were removed in MediaWiki 1.25. 

<dpl>
  category=African Union member states
  nottitlematch=Sudan
  addpagecounter=true
  includepage ={Infobox Country or territory}:area:population_estimate,%0[100]
  format      =,,\n|style="text-align:right;"|²{#ifexpr:%COUNT%>300¦<big>'''%COUNT%'''</big>¦%COUNT%}²,
  table       =,Country,Area,Population,Text,#hits
  tablerow    =style="text-align:right;"|%%,style="text-align:right;"|%%,style="background-color:lightyellow;"|<small>%%</small>,\n|style="text-align:right;"|%%
</dpl>
  • We select some African countries, we exclude Sudan
  • We acquire a piece of meta data about the articles we will find (in our case the usage counter)
  • We include two named parameters from a template call, {{Infobox Country or territory}}
  • We include a short text passage from the text before the first chapter
  • We use the third parameter of format to output the usage counter (we could even highlight values above 100 here, for example)
  • We highlight usage values above 300
  • We define a standard wiki table with the article name in the first column (named "Country")
  • We define column headers for transcluded contents and for the usage counter
  • We care for right alignment of the numerical values and define a bgcolor for the text

"tablesortcol"

tablesortcol define a column to be used as sort key (see also table )

Syntax:

tablesortcol=number

number is the position of the column that shall be used as sortkey when the result is initially displayed.

  • column numbering starts with 1;
  • tablesortcol = 0 means do not sort; this is the default.
  • Negative numbers are used to sort in descending order; e.g. -3 would sort according to the third column in descending order.
  • Note that the rest of the row after the selected column will also be part of the sortkey; so the contents of successive columns may serve as a secondary sort criterion if there are identical values in the selected column.
  • Also note that the whole column contents is taken; this may include hidden contents or markup sequences if you used column formatting commands. For the same reason you cannot expect numeric contents to be sorted 'numerically' - sorting will always be alphabetical.
  • you can of course use something like 'class=sortable' together with tablesortcol. The difference is that ..
    • interactive sorting only works after the article has been initially displayed
    • interactive sorting tries to guess the content type of a column and sorts according to that (date, number, string)
  • If you do not use tablesortcol the output order of your table rows will depend on the sort order by which the articles were analysed. That order depends on other DPL commands like ordermethod. The default is "alphabetically by title". So, without tablesortcol you get the tablerows in alphabetical sequence of the article names where they come from. With tablesortcol you can order them by the column contents itself.

Heading mode

headingmode

headingmode To control the output of the headings in a DPL with complex/multi-parameter ordermethod. (No effect with single-param ordermethods.) For ordermethod=method1,method2,..., method1 is used for headings. E.g. headingmode affects category headings in ordermethod=category,title (2-param ordermethod). See also headingcount

Syntax:

headingmode=modename

modename can be one of:

  • none — headings are not displayed, no heading — (default)
  • unordered — outputs an unordered list — HTML tag ul
  • ordered — outputs an ordered list — HTML tag ol
  • definition — outputs a definition list — HTML tag dl
  • H2 — outputs sections — HTML tags H2 Currently broken
  • H3 — outputs sections — HTML tags H3 Currently broken
  • H4 — outputs sections — HTML tags H4 Currently broken

Example: 

<dpl>
  category=Terraria Wiki|Community
  notcategory=Games
  nottitlematch=%d%|Disambiguations
  count=7
  ordermethod=category,title
  headingmode=definition
  mode=ordered
</dpl>

This list will output pages that belong to one of the categories Terraria Wiki, Community in a list similar to this (HTML source). The categories are listed in sorted order, and the titles are replaced with the appropriate links (nottitlematch and count are simply used to reduce the output size):

(HTML) Output Actual Output 
<dl>
  <dt>Category</dt>
  <dd>
    <ol>
      <li>Page1</li>
      <li>Page2</li>
    </ol>
  </dd>
</dl>

Headingmode can be used with multi-column output but the length of the columns may in this case vary more than you would expect.

headingcount

headingcount In combination with headingmode this parameter decides whether we show a text line with the number of articles per group or not.

Syntax:

headingcount=true

default is headingcount=false


listattr

listattr Adds attributes to HTML list elements, depending on mode (HTML element is ol for ordered, ul for unordered, div for others). Can be used with pseudo mode=inline where inline text contains one or more <br/>.

Only applicable to mode=ordered or mode=unordered.

Not applicable to mode=category or mode=inline (with no <br/> in inline text).

Syntax:

listattr=attribute1="val1" attribute2="val2" ...

Examples:

Input (HTML) Output Actual Output 
<dpl>
category=Community
nottitlematch=%Forums%|Admin%
ordermethod=category,title
headingmode=definition
mode=none
listattr= class="submenul" class="dpl light-background"
itemattr= class="submenuli" style= "font-style: italic;"
</dpl>

<ol>
  <li class="submenul" class="dpl light-background"> Cat1 (link)
    <div class="submenul">
      <span class="submenuli" style="font-style: italic;"> Page1_1 </span> <br/>
      <span class="submenuli" style="font-style: italic;"> Page1_2 </span>
    </div>
  </li>
  <li class="submenul" class="dpl light-background"> Cat2 (link)
    <div class="submenul">
      <span class="submenuli" style="font-style: italic;"> Page2_1 </span> <br/> 
      <span class="submenuli" style="font-style: italic;"> Page2_2 </span>
    </div>
  </li>
</ol>

<dpl>
category=Community
nottitlematch=%Forums%|Admin%
ordermethod=category,title
headingmode=definition
mode=unordered
listattr= class="submenul" class="dpl light-background"
itemattr= class="submenuli" style= "font-style: italic;"
</dpl>

<ol>
  <li> Cat1 (link)
    <ul class="submenul" class="dpl light-background">
      <li class="submenuli" style="font-style: italic;"> Page1_1 </li> 
      <li class="submenuli" style="font-style: italic;"> Page1_2 </li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li> Cat2 (link)
    <ul class="submenul" class="dpl light-background">
      <li class="submenuli" style="font-style: italic;"> Page2_1 </li> 
      <li class="submenuli" style="font-style: italic;"> Page2_2 </li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ol>

itemattr

itemattr Adds attributes to HTML list items, depending on mode (element is li for ordered/unordered, span for others).

Not applicable to mode=category.

Syntax:

itemattr=attribute1="val1" attribute2="val2" ...

hlistattr

hlistattr Adds attributes to the HTML list element at the heading/top level, depending on headingmode (HTML element would be ol for ordered, ul for unordered, dl for definition, div for others)

Not yet applicable to headingmode=none.

Syntax:

hlistattr=attribute1="val1" attribute2="val2" ...

Example:

Input (HTML) Output Actual Output 
<dpl>
category=Community
nottitlematch=%Forums%|Admin%
ordermethod=category,pagetouched
headingmode=definition
mode=ordered
hlistattr= class="topmenul" id="dmenu" style= "font-size:17px;"
</dpl>

<div class="topmenul" id="dmenu" style="font-size:17px;">
  <li> Category 2 (link) </li>
  <ol>
      <li>Page1_1</li>
      <li>Page1_2</li>
  </ol>
  <li> Category 2 (link) </li>
  <ol>
      <li>Page2_1</li>
  </ol>
</div>

These examples compare listattr, itemattr, and hlistattr

Input Actual Output 
<dpl>
category=Community
nottitlematch=%Forums%|Admin%
ordermethod=category,title
headingmode=definition
mode=unordered
listattr= class="submenul" class="dpl light-background"
itemattr= class="submenuli" style= "font-style: italic;"
</dpl>

<dpl>
category=Community
nottitlematch=%Forums%|Admin%
ordermethod=category,title
headingmode=definition
mode=unordered
listattr= class="submenul"
itemattr= class="submenuli" class="dpl light-background" style= "font-style: italic;"
</dpl>

<dpl>
category=Community
nottitlematch=%Forums%|Admin%
ordermethod=category,title
headingmode=definition
mode=unordered
hlistattr= class="topmenul" id="dmenu" class="dpl light-background"
listattr= class="submenul"
itemattr= class="submenuli" style="font-style: italic;"
</dpl>

See also hitemattr.

hitemattr

hitemattr Adds attributes to HTML list items (headings) at the heading level, depending on headingmode (HTML element would be li for ordered/unordered, div for others).

To be used with headingmode='unordered' or 'ordered'. (Not yet applicable for others.)

Syntax:

hitemattr=attribute1="val1" attribute2="val2" ...

Example:

Input (HTML) Output Intended Output Actual Output 
<dpl>
category=Community
nottitlematch=%Forums%|Admin%
ordermethod=category,title
headingmode=unordered
mode=ordered
hlistattr= class="topmenul" id="dmenu"
hitemattr= class="topmenuli" class="dpl light-background"
</dpl>

<ul class="topmenul" id="dmenu">
  <li class="topmenuli" class="dpl light-background"> Category 1 (link)
    <ol>
      <li>Page1_1</li>
      <li>Page1_2</li>
    </ol>
  </li>
  <li class="topmenuli" class="dpl light-background"> Category 2 (link)
    <ol>
      <li>Page2_1</li>
    </ol>
  </li>
</ul>
  • Category 1 (link)
    1. Page1_1
    2. Page1_2
  • Category 2 (link)
    1. Page2_1

userdateformat

userdateformat Define a special layout for date formatting.

Syntax:

userdateformat=formatstring

The formatstring may contain letters like "y,Y,m,M,d,D,h,H,i,I,s" for year, month day. Other characters are printed as they are. See the documentation for php function date() for more details [1]. The userdateformat applies to all date/time fields, see the parameters: addeditdate,addpagetoucheddate,addfirstcategorydate.

Example:

userdateformat=Y-m-d (D)

Default:

By default DPL uses "Y-m-d H:i:s" to display date and time. Note that MediaWiki stores all dates/times in UTC format. When displaying a time stamp DPL will translate it according to

  1. the timezone preference (difference to UTC/GMT) given by the user in his user settings.
  2. if no preference is given and for all anonymous users the local time on the server will be used.

So you will either see a time based on your local time (browser based) or based on the timezone in which the wiki server is running.

The same kind of translation applies to dates you specify when selecting articles by revsion date/time.

Control the way article names are displayed

shownamespace

shownamespace To restrict the appearance of the namespace name of a page before the page. As the switch is true by default it should be set to false if you want to avoid namespaces to be shown in the output.

Syntax:

shownamespace=false

Example: 

<dpl>
  category      = Help
  namespace     = Help_talk
  shownamespace = false
</dpl>

This list will output all Talk pages in Category:Help, listed without the 'Help talk:' prepended to page names.
The namespace 'Talk' refers to talk pages within the main namespace; all other talk namespaces, such as 'Help' or 'Guide' talk pages, would need the format 'namespace_talk'.
Only talk pages that have been added to the category (by placing [[Category:Help]] on the talk page) will be listed.



Note that in mode=userformat there is a different way to decide whether you want to output the title with or without namespace. In mode=userformat two built-in variables are provided which contain the page name including the namespace (%PAGE%) and the base title name (%TITLE%).


escapelinks

escapelinks Regarding images and categories this parameter allows you to decide whether
  • you want to see a link to the image or to the category page (escapelinks=true, this is the default)
  • you want to see the image or make the page which contains the DPL statement part of the categories which are returned by DPL (escapelinks=false)

Syntax:

escapelinks=false

Note: You can use this parameter to show images; another way to do this is to use the gallery extension in combination with DPL; there is an example for this on the dpldemo website.


titlemaxlength

titlemaxlength To limit the number of characters of the title to display. If the page title (this does not include the namespace or any other prefix before the title) is bigger than the titlemaxlength value, the title is truncated and ended by '...'.

Syntax:

titlemaxlength=number of characters

replaceintitle

replaceintitle execute a string replacement operation on the %TITLE% var

Syntax:

replaceintitle=search for,replacement

The search for argument must be an expression which can be used in a php preg_replace() function call.

Example:

to remove the string "demo" in article names, you must write

replaceintitle=/demo/,

Note that standard regexp rules apply. The regexp must start with a non-alphanumeric character -- but not with a backslash! It is good habit to use a '/' if this character is not needed within the regexp itself. Read the php manual to understand the details of regular expressions.


Arranging article lists in columns and rows

columns

columns Define a column layout for the output.

Syntax:

columns=ncols

Example: 

<dpl>
  category	  = Help
  nottitlematch	  = %DPL%
  includesubpages = false
  columns	  = 3
  rowcolformat	  = width=100%
  count		  = 6
</dpl>

Simply displays non-DPL articles and subcategories in Category:Help in 3 columns (rowcolformat is used to make the table width 100%).

Note: columns is currently bugged (possible combatibility issue between Mediawiki 1.31.2 and DPL3 v3.3.3) [1].
For a 3-column dpl, css can be used to achieve the desired results: 

<div style="-webkit-column-count:3;column-count:3;">
<dpl>
  category	  = Help
  nottitlematch	  = %DPL%
  includesubpages = false
  columns	  = 3
  rowcolformat	  = width=100%
  count		  = 6
</dpl></div>

More complex example:

In mode=userformat the outer tags from listseparators will be repeated for each column. 

<div style="-webkit-column-count:3;column-count:3;">
<dpl>
  category	  = Help
  nottitlematch	  = %DPL%
  includesubpages = false
  addpagesize	  = true
  ordermethod	  = size
  listseparators  = {|class=sortablewikitable id=2\n!Rank\n!Article\n!Bytes\n|-,\n|%NR%.\n|[[%PAGE%]]\n|style="text-align:right;"|%SIZE%,\n|-,\n|}
  columns	  = 2
  count		  = 6
</dpl></div>

This output contains a list of the largest non-DPL articles in Category:Help. Each column consists of a table which has itself three columns: rank, article name and size.

Rank Article Bytes
1. Help:Characters 863
2. Help:Schedule 903
3. Help:Character Intersection 952
4. Help:Episodes 1036
5. Help:User groups 1194
6. Help:News 1480

rows

rows Define a row layout for the output. A "row" is a group of output lines for which the heading is repeated. If you do not know how big your result will be, it may be better to use the rowsize parameter.

Syntax:

rows=nrows

In mode=userformat, the outer tags from listseparators will be repeated for each column. Thus you can create long lists where the table heading is repeated from time to time.

Example: 

<dpl>
  category	  = Help
  nottitlematch	  = %DPL%
  includesubpages = false
  addpagesize	  = true
  ordermethod	  = size
  listseparators  = {|class=sortablewikitable id=2\n!Rank\n!Article\n!Bytes\n|-,\n|%NR%.\n|[[%PAGE%]]\n|style="text-align:right;"|%SIZE%,\n|-,\n|}
  rows		  = 2
  count		  = 6
</dpl>

The output will contain a list of the largest non-DPL articles in Category:Help, arranged in two rows (dividing the list of lines equally into 2). Each row consists of a table which has itself three columns: rank, article name, and size.

Rank Article Bytes
1. Help:Characters 863
2. Help:Schedule 903
3. Help:Character Intersection 952
4. Help:Episodes 1036
5. Help:User groups 1194
6. Help:News 1480

rowsize

rowsize Define a row layout for the output. A "row" is a group of n output lines for which the heading will be repeated.

Syntax:

rowsize=nrowsize

In mode=userformat the outer tags from listseparators will be repeated after each group of rowsize output lines. Thus you can create long lists where the table heading is repeated in regular intervals.

Example: 

<dpl>
  category	  = Help
  nottitlematch	  = %DPL%
  includesubpages = false
  addpagesize	  = true
  ordermethod	  = size
  listseparators  = {|class=sortablewikitable id=2\n!Rank\n!width=200px|Article\n!Bytes\n|-,\n|%NR%.\n|[[%PAGE%]]\n|style="text-align:right;"|%SIZE%,\n|-,\n|}
  rowsize	  = 3
  count		  = 6
</dpl>

The output will contain a list of all non-DPL articles in Category:Help. After each group of 3 entries (article names) the table heading will be repeated. It may be useful to set the width of the column with the article names explicitly, so that the tables in each row have equal width.

Rank Article Bytes
1. Help:Characters 863
2. Help:Schedule 903
3. Help:Character Intersection 952
4. Help:Episodes 1036
5. Help:User groups 1194
6. Help:News 1480

rowcolformat

rowcolformat Defines layout properties (using HTML table tag parameters) for the row/column grid.

Syntax:

rowcolformat=html tags

Example: 

<dpl>
  category	  = Help
  nottitlematch	  = %DPL%
  includesubpages = false
  columns	  = 3
  rowcolformat	  = cellspacing=20
  count		  = 6
</dpl>

There will be more space around the columns than normal. See columns above for another example.

The ideal way to use rowcolformat is to assign a CSS class to your DPL table which has been defined in your mediawiki:Common.css article.

Example: 

<dpl>
  category	  = Help
  nottitlematch	  = %DPL%
  includesubpages = false
  columns	  = 3
  rowcolformat	  = class=dpl3columns
  count		  = 6
</dpl>

In your Common.css article you might have written something like 

table.dpl3columns td {
  background: #f2f2f2;
  padding: 0.5em;
  border: 3px;
  width: 33%;
}
  1. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named columns bug
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