[Mediawiki-l] Store data in an template

[Michael Daly]

Mediawiki wrote:

> is there a way to store  general information in a template and access parts 
> of that information by a conditional call of the template?

You can do this if you put a long list of #if statements in another 
template and nest them accordingly.

For example if you have template DepartmentHeads, you could have

{{ #ifeq: {{{1}}} | Dept X | Smith }}
{{ #ifeq: {{{1}}} | Dept Y | Jones }}
{{ #ifeq: {{{1}}} | Dept Z | Davis }}
etc.

Template PhoneNumbers could have

{{ #ifeq: {{{1}}} | Smith | (888) 555-1234 }}
{{ #ifeq: {{{1}}} | Jones | (888) 555-4321 }}
{{ #ifeq: {{{1}}} | Davis | (888) 555-1221 }}
etc.

Then just include that in the outer template:

The head of {{{dept}}} is {{ DepartmentHeads|{{{dept}}} }}
They can be contacted at {{ PhoneNumbers|{{ DepartmentHeads|{{{dept}}} }} }}

This is a tedious way to create templates as a quasi-database, but if 
the data is small in quantity and fairly static over time, it works and 
avoids building an extension.

Mike