On 18/09/2009, at 10:00 PM, Bryan Tong Minh wrote:

As you may know we use ugly uselang hacks on Commons to create our own distinct upload forms. I want this functionality in MediaWiki.

We all do, I think it'll be thrown in as part of the Ford Foundation work.

HTMLForm provides a great way to abstractify form construction by providing a descriptor that can be transformed into an HTML presentation. What I want is to have allow Commons admins to create custom uploads forms by providing a descriptor suitable for HTMLForm, which is then translated to HTML and accessable via Special:Upload/formname.

Actually, as I understand it, we're hoping that we can throw together a generic workflow management system for MediaWiki that could be used to re-implement deletion, promotion, upload, blocking, and other processes.

In my opinion, HTMLForm forms could be the framework we're looking for for adding forms to this system, good thinking.

The question is how to allow admins to edit this descriptor. In PHP this is simply an array. We could allow input as JSON or XML in a MediaWiki: namespace message, which is then translated to an array and then fed to HTMLForm. Or it could be only GUI editable via a Special page and the forms can be stored elsewhere in the database.

The only sane idea is a proper special page. Adding configuration through JSON or XML, especially in the MediaWiki namespace, is lazy at best.

-- Andrew Garrett agarrett@wikimedia.org http://werdn.us/