On Dec 27, 2013, at 8:27 PM, Matthew Walker mwalker@wikimedia.org wrote:
Owen,
That's really nifty actually -- can you talk a little about how y'all manage the i18n issues? Do you prerender all the messages outside of the template? Or do you use Mustache lambda's to do some formatting inside the template itself?
Hi, sorry for the delay. Holiday vacation. :)
We have a simple Controller framework to go along with the templates. When we originally proposed it we were going to put 100% of the logic and data inside the controller side of things and pass it to the template. However, that just creates more boilerplate/temp variables and makes the resulting code and templates a lot harder to read 6 months later. For example doing messages in the controller and passing the data to the template:
$message = wfMessage(‘message’); $template->setVal($message);
And then the template would have something like:
<?php echo $message ?>
vs: _nothing_ necessary in the controller and calling the message functions directly in the template:
<?php echo wfMessage(‘message’) ?>
In the first case you actually have no idea whether the source for $message is actually a mediawiki i18n message or something else, but in the second case it’s a lot more clear. And from a readability perspective the best code is no code at all. :)
So that’s why we put message calls in the template. Since we allow function calls, theoretically you can call any function, but we prevent the developers from doing that by shooting them with nerf darts when they try. Unlike the built in Quick template stuff, our templates are not objects, but they still have access to global variables and functions.
Additionally, where and how do you draw the line between using a template, and having additional logic outside of the template?
The only logic we put in templates is simple conditional stuff and loops. isset(), empty(), foreach() etc. No point in having a separate template language when you’re already doing PHP on the back end.
I'm also curious how you manage the coupling between layers -- do you pass in all variables to all templates; or is there some sort of management / documentation layer that specifies what data (and what format the data needs to be in) should be provided to a template.
The documentation is a bit of a mess, we just use PHP docstrings. We did originally propose a more strict validation/documentation framework to go along with it, and some of that code was written but we aren’t using it yet. The self-documenting nature of the Mediawiki API classes is a particularly nice feature, and we would have preferred to do something like that but we haven’t gotten around to it…
When writing very complex multi-function Special Pages (almost all of our internal tools are built as special pages) it gets kind of unwieldy with the special page class that just has a single execute() function and the redundant boilerplate to define ajax functions etc. Since most of our front end is javascript now and we sometimes want templates/html or json data from the same controllers, we have a 1:1 mapping between methods and templates and every controller method is automatically an ajax function that can return json or html. The front end can call ANY back end method and ask for json data or the html with the data applied to it. When the Controller gets “too unwieldy” (the threshold for this depends on the developer) we generally refactor them into a single Controller and a set of Helper classes so that we retain the same external end points, just moving the code around.
Here’s an example of that:
On every content page, there’s a right rail module that shows the latest photos uploaded to the wiki:
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Nikola_Tesla_and_You_(Fallout_3)
on the back end, that’s entirely self contained in this LatestPhotosController which is dropped into the skin with a render() function. However, the data that it generates can be used in other places:
http://fallout.wikia.com/wikia.php?controller=LatestPhotos (call controller, combine data with html and return it) http://fallout.wikia.com/wikia.php?controller=LatestPhotos&format=json (call controller, just return the data that would have been in the template)
The default method is executeIndex() and the default template is <controller>_Index. Here’s the controller code:
https://github.com/Wikia/app/blob/dev/skins/oasis/modules/LatestPhotosContro...
And the template:
https://github.com/Wikia/app/blob/dev/skins/oasis/modules/templates/LatestPh...
Hope that helps provide a bit more context for how this is actually used in the application.
-Owen
~Matt Walker Wikimedia Foundation Fundraising Technology Team
On Fri, Dec 27, 2013 at 6:44 PM, Owen Davis owen@wikia-inc.com wrote:
Ha. Well, we’ve been using mustache at Wikia for a while, but not heavily. The backstory is that we’ve written approximately 270 extensions over the years and we have written a few simple frameworks to keep that code manageable. One of those things is a pseudo-mvc framework. The template itself is not an object, and it can be either a PHP or mustache template. A mustache template has more limitations, but in many cases it is sufficient and in general I feel like it’s a better idea to just pass data to a simple template rather than having a lot of logic in the template. Additionally, being able to share the same template between front end and back end has advantages.
In my opinion, backwards compatibility with the existing quick template stuff is impossible to avoid, so retaining a PHP option is essential but the mustache option gives a lot of power to the front end developers which is where a lot of the work is being done now…
For example, the modal dialog that pops up at the end of the new wiki creation process is a mustache template:
https://github.com/Wikia/app/blob/dev/extensions/wikia/CreateNewWiki/templat...
On Dec 27, 2013, at 8:41 AM, Niklas Laxström niklas.laxstrom@gmail.com wrote:
2013/12/27 Tyler Romeo tylerromeo@gmail.com
If we want a comprehensive templating system in PHP core,
I want a templating system that can be used both in PHP and JavaScript
and
fits in our way of doing i18n. And a bunny.
-Niklas _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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