[Mediawiki-l] Parser extension question: obtaining the tag name?

[Daniel Barrett]

Jim Wilson writes:
>There are a couple of different ways to get at the information that you
require
>without necessarily pulling it from the tag execution at "run time"
>as it were.
>Since you're the one setting the tag name, you should know what it's
called, right?

True, but I am trying to write some highly reusable/maintainable code
where the tag name is just input data, since the MediaWiki programming
model to "statically map tags to parser functions" doesn't seem optimal
for our situation.  Here's the scoop.

At my company, we have many database servers. For each server, we have a
separate wiki tag, <server name here>, that allows adhoc queries to that
database server. All these wiki tags have the same implementation, but
direct the operation to the named database server.  We could have done
this instead with a single tag, e.g., <sql server="server1">...</sql>,
but for convenience of our wiki users (as well as legacy reasons), we
have one tag per server.

Right now, whenever we add wiki support for a new database server, we
have to modify several pieces of code by hand to add the wiki tag:

1. Create the parser function (very short, just a wrapper that calls a
more general function using the specific server's connection string)
2. Create a new setHook call
3. Append the tag name to the $wgExtensionCredits 'description' entry
4. Possibly create a bunch more parser functions & setHook calls in the
future, for new purposes

This is for EACH server we add. It is a maintenance pain as the number
of servers grows, and requests for new kinds of database functionality
are growing too. So I want to refactor things to abstract away the
servers, make things completely data driven, and stop adding code.

In the new model, I simply maintain a collection of "SqlServer" objects
that represent the servers.  To add support for a new server, I'd just
add it to the SqlServer collection and be done.  No other code-writing
involved.  All the above 4 steps go away.

But in order to do this, I need to detect the tag name which invoked the
extension, so I can do the following:

- Get the tag name
- Generate all the necessary setHook call(s)
- In a single function, branch on the tag name to use the appropriate
SqlServer object, and pass it to a single, general function

I hope this explanation makes sense.

DanB

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