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TWiki Webmaster Reference (ver. 01 Sep 2001)

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TWiki Installation Guide

The following is installation instructions for the TWiki 4.2 production release on an Apache web server on Linux. Visit TWiki:TWiki.InstallingTWiki for the latest updates to this guide and supplemental information for installing or upgrading TWiki, including notes on installing TWiki on different platforms, environments and web hosting sites.

If you are upgrading from a previous version of TWiki, you probably want to read TWikiUpgradeGuide instead.

Both this document and the TWikiUpgradeGuide are also available in the root of the distribution as HTML files. For this reason links to pages inside your own TWiki are written like TWiki.WebHome and not like live web links.

Preparing to install TWiki

Before attempting to install TWiki, you are encouraged to review the TWiki:TWiki.AdminSkillsAssumptions. This guide assumes the person installing TWiki has, at a minimum, basic knowledge of server administration on the system on which TWiki is to be installed. While it is possible to install TWiki with FTP access alone (for example, on a hosted site), it is tricky and may require additional support from your hosting service (for example, in setting file ownership and installing missing perl CPAN libraries).

To help setup a correct Apache configuration, you are very much encouraged to use the automatic tool TWiki:TWiki.ApacheConfigGenerator which generates the contents for an Apache config file for TWiki based on your inputs.

While this installation guide specifically describes installation on an Apache web server on Linux, TWiki should be fine with any web server and OS that meet the system requirements (see below). For additional notes on installing TWiki on other systems, see TWiki:TWiki.InstallingTWiki#OtherPlatforms.

If you are installing TWiki without Unix/Linux root (administrator) priviledges (for example, on a hosted domain), see "Notes on Installing TWiki on Non-Root Account" below for supplemental instructions to the basic steps presented below.

If you are upgrading from an earlier major version of TWiki such as Cairo (TWiki 3) you will need the information found in TWiki:TWiki.TWikiUpgradeGuide. There is also a static HTML TWikiUpgradeGuide.html included in the root of your TWiki distribution.

Upgrading from a recent TWiki4 release is much simpler. Upgraders from earlier TWiki4 versions can follow the steps described in TWiki:TWiki.UpgradingTWiki04x00PatchReleases to ensure a safe upgrade without accidently overwriting customizations.

One of the more difficult tasks is installation of addition CPAN libraries. See TWiki:TWiki.HowToInstallCpanModules for detailed information on how to install CPAN libraries.

If you need help, ask a question in the TWiki:Support web or on TWiki:Codev.TWikiIRC (irc.freenode.net, channel #twiki)

Basic Installation

  1. Download the TWiki distribution from http://TWiki.org/download.html.
  2. Make a directory for the installation and unpack the distribution in it. In the rest of this document we assume this directory is called twiki.
    • Note! that TWiki does not allow spaces in the directory names. Especially on Windows make sure to use a directory path without spaces.
  3. Setup access file and directory rights to enable the webserver user (the user Apache runs the CGI scripts as) to read and write inside the twiki directory.
    • Warning! Do not just just run a chmod -R 770 twiki. The access rules have different meaning for files and directories. This is the most common mistake installers make.
    • The distribution tgz has the file and directory access rights setup to work with a reasonable security level that will work for all types of installations including shared hosting.
    • The ownership of the twiki directory tree is normally set to the user that unpacked the tgz and will have to be changed to the webserver user using the command chown -R user:group /path/to/twiki. The webserver username varies from Distributions. Examples for some major distributions:
      • RedHat, Fedora, CentOS, Gentoo, Mandriva : chown -R apache:apache /path/to/twiki
      • debian/Ubuntu/Kubunto : chown -R www-data:www-data /path/to/twiki
      • Suse : chown -R wwwrun:www /path/to/twiki
    • If you mistakenly change the access rights in a way that makes TWiki stop working, simply run the script found at TWiki:TWiki.SettingFileAccessRightsLinuxUnix to set the access right of the entire TWiki tree back to the distributed defaults.
    • It is possible to define tighter access rules than the ones given by default after the installation is complete. But how tight they should be depends on your distribution and local needs. Typically you may want to limit all access from world if the webserver machine has login access for other users than root and the web server administrator. For a dedicated web server made just for running TWiki with limited login access the default access rights have a good safety level.
  4. Check the Perl installation. Ensure that Perl 5 and the Perl CGI library are installed on your system.
    • The default location of Perl is /usr/bin/perl. If it's somewhere else, change the path to Perl in the first line of each script in the twiki/bin directory.
    • Some systems require a special extension on perl scripts (e.g. .cgi or .pl). This is normally only needed under Windows and only where perl scripts are only recognized by file extension. Linux and Unix users should normally never need to do this. If necessary, rename all files in twiki/bin (i.e. rename view to view.pl etc). If you do this, make sure you set the ScriptSuffix option in configure (Step 6).
  5. Create the file LocalLib.cfg located as twiki/bin/LocalLib.cfg
    • There is a template for this file in twiki/bin/LocalLib.cfg.txt. Simply copy LocalLib? .cfg.txt to LocalLib? .cfg. Make sure the ownership and access rights of the copy are the same as LocalLib? .cfg.txt
    • The file twiki/bin/LocalLib.cfg must contain a setting for $twikiLibPath, which must point to the absolute file path of your twiki/lib e.g. /var/www/twiki/lib.
    • If you need to install additional CPAN modules, but can't update the main Perl installation files on the server, you can set $CPANBASE to point to your personal CPAN install. Don't forget that the webserver user has to be able to read those files as well.
  6. Choose best configuration method for your webserver. There are two ways to configure Apache: config file included from httpd.conf or .htaccess files
    • Apache config file: The recommended method is using a config file. With a config file you can put the entire TWiki configuration in ONE file (typically named twiki.conf). Performance is much better with a config file, and one file gives the best overview and ensures that you get a safe installation . However using a config file requires that you can restart Apache which again means that you need root or sudo access to stop and start Apache. The TWiki apache config file is included from the main Apache config file http.conf. Most distributions have a directory from which any file that ends with .conf gets included when you restart Apache (Example RedHat/Fedora/Centos: /etc/httpd/conf.d). If you use a virtual host setup in Apache you should include the twiki.conf file from inside the desired virtual host config in your Apache configuration.
    • .htaccess file: This should only be used when you cannot use a config file. Performance is slowed down because Apache has to look through all directories in search for possible .htaccess files each time someone views a page in TWiki. Normally this is the only way to control Apache in a shared host environment where you have no root or sudo priviledges.
  7. Configure the webserver
    • Unless you are an Apache expert setting up the webserver can be quite difficult. But TWiki has three resources that make setting up Apache easier.
      • The best and easiest way is to use webpage TWiki:TWiki.ApacheConfigGenerator which contains a tool that can generate a safe and working config file for TWiki on Apache.
      • In the root of the twiki installation you find an example config file twiki_httpd_conf.txt
      • In the root of the twiki installation and in the twiki/bin directory you find example .htaccess files you can copy and modify. The files contains help text explaining how to set them up. In twiki/bin you find .htaccess.txt which can be copied to .htaccess and defined access to the CGI scripts. In the root of TWiki you find pub-htaccess.txt which you can copy to pub/.htaccess, subdir-htaccess.txt which you can copy to all directories as .htaccess except bin and pub, and you find root-htaccess.txt which you can copy to .htaccess in the twiki root directory. But again only use .htaccess files if you do not have root priviledges.
    • If you are unsure about how to do this on your system, see TWiki:TWiki.InstallingTWiki#OtherPlatforms for links to information about various server setups.
    • Note! When you use config files you need to restart Apache each time you change a setting to make the new setting active.
  8. Protect the configure script
    • You should never leave the configure script open to the public. Limit access to the twiki/bin/configure script to either localhost, an IP address or a specific user using basic Apache authentication. The TWiki:TWiki.ApacheConfigGenerator lets you setup who has access to the configure script. Also the example twiki-httpd-conf.txt and bin/.htaccess.txt files includes the needed setting to protect the configure script.
    • If you limit the access to a particular user then you need to setup a .htpasswd file that contains the user name and password that Apache will authenticate against. Per default both TWiki:TWiki.ApacheConfigGenerator and the example config files and .htaccess files uses twiki/data/.htpasswd but this file does not exist until you have TWiki running and have registered the first user. You therefore have two options. Either limit the access to localhost or an IP address, or make a .htpasswd file. To make a .htpasswd file change directory to twiki/data and issue the command htpasswd -c .htpasswd username and enter your password when asked. The username must match the Require user username directive in the Apache config file or .htaccess file. Do not use a username you will later use to register in TWiki because TWiki will then claim that you are already registered.
  9. Run the configure script from your browser (enter http://yourdomain/twiki/bin/configure into your browser address bar)
    • Resolve any errors or warnings it tells you about.
    • Note! When you run configure for the first time, you can only edit the section General Path Settings. Save these settings, and then return to configure to continue configuration.
    • If your webserver can be accessed by more than one domain name make sure to add the additional alternative URLs to {PermittedRedirectHostUrls}
    • When you return to configure you now need to setup Mail and Proxies. Especially the {WebMasterEmail}, and {SMTP}{MAILHOST} must be defined to enable TWiki to send registration emails. Many ISPs have introduced authentication when sending emails to fight spam so you may also have to set {SMTP}{Username} and {SMTP}{Password}. If you do not want to enable mailing or want to enable it later you can uncheck {EnableEmail}.

You now have a basic, unauthenticated installation running. At this point you can just point your Web browser at http://yourdomain.com/twiki/bin/view and start TWiki-ing away!

Important Server Security Settings

Before you continue any further there are some basic and very important security settings you have to make sure are set correctly.

  • As already described above you should protect the configure script from general access. The configure script is designed for use by administrators only and should be restricted to invocation by them only, by using the basic Apache authentication. Because of this there has not been put much effort into hardening the script. The configure script cannot save any settings once the password has been saved the first time, but the script could still be vulnerable to specially crafted field values and the script reveals many details about the webserver that you should not display in public.
  • You absolutely must turn off any kind of PHP, Perl, Python, Server Side Includes etc in the pub directory. TWiki has some built-in protection which renames files with dangerous filenames by appending .txt to the filename. But this is a secondary security measure. The essential action that you must take is to turn off any possible execution of any of the attached files.
    Most Linux distributions have a default Apache installation which has PHP and server side include (SSI) enabled.
  • Make sure that you deny access to all other twiki directories than the bin and pub directories. When you have access to the Apache config files the twiki_httpd_conf.txt file mentioned above also contains protection of these directories.
    For those that do not have access to the Apache config files a sample subdir-htaccess.txt file can be copied as .htaccess to the data, lib, locale, templates, tools and working directories.

The TWiki:TWiki.ApacheConfigGenerator as well as the example twiki_httpd_conf.txt and example htaccess.txt files include the needed settings that protect against all 3 security elements.

Next Steps

Once you have TWiki installed and running, you might consider the following optional steps for setting up and customizing your TWiki site. Many of the references below refer to topics within your TWiki installation. For example, TWiki.TWikiSkins refers to the TWikiSkins topic in your TWiki web. Easy way to jump directly to view the pages is to open your own TWiki in your browser and write TWiki.TWikiSkins in the Jump test box to the right in the top bar and hit Enter. You can find these topics in the on-line reference copy at the official TWiki website: TWiki Release 4.2

Enable Authentication of Users

This step provides for site access control and user activity tracking on your TWiki site. This is particularly important for sites that are publicly accessible on the web. This guide describes only the most common of several possible authentication setups for TWiki and is suitable for public web sites. For information about other setups, see TWiki.TWikiUserAuthentication, and TWiki:TWiki.TWikiUserAuthenticationSupplement.

These are the steps for enabling "Template Login" which asks for a username and password in a web page, and processes them using the Apache 'htpasswd' password manager. Users can log in and log out.

  1. Under the Security Settings pane of configure :
    1. Select TWiki::Client::TemplateLogin for {LoginManager}.
    2. Select TWiki::Users::HtPasswdUser for {PasswordManager}.
    3. Save your configure settings.
    4. Register yourself using the TWiki.TWikiRegistration topic.
      HELP Check that the password manager recognizes the new user. Check that a new line with the username and encrypted password is added to the data/.htpasswd file. If not, you probably got a path wrong, or the permissions may not allow the webserver user to write to that file.
  2. Edit a topic (by clicking on the Edit link at beginning or end of topic) to check if authentication works.

You are strongly encouraged to read TWiki.TWikiUserAuthentication, TWiki:TWiki.TWikiUserAuthenticationSupplement, and TWiki:TWiki.SecuringTWikiSite for further information about managing users and security of your TWiki site.

Note! The other LoginManager option TWiki::Client::ApacheLogin uses a basic Apache type authentication where the browser itself prompts you for username and password. Most will find the TemplateLogin looking nicer. But ApacheLogin is required when you use Apache authentication methods like mod_ldap where all authentication is handled by an Apache module and not by the TWiki perl code. When you use ApacheLogin the apache configuration must be set up to require authentication of the some but not all the scripts in the bin directory. This section in the Apache config (or .htaccess) controls this 

<FilesMatch "(attach|edit|manage|rename|save|upload|mail|logon|rest|.*auth).*">
   require valid-user
</FilesMatch>

The TWiki:TWiki.ApacheConfigGenerator includes this section when you choose ApacheLogin. In the example twiki_httpd_conf.txt and bin/.htaccess.txt files this section is commented out with #. Uncomment the section when you use ApacheLogin. It is important that this section is commented out or removed when you use TemplateLogin.

Define the Administrator User(s)

Administrators have read and write access to any topic in TWiki, irrespectively of TWiki access controls. When you install TWiki one of the first things you will want to do is define yourself as an administrator. You become an administrator simply by adding yourself to the TWikiAdminGroup. It is the WikiName and not the login name you add to the group. Editing the Main.TWikiAdminGroup topic requires that you are an administrator. So to add the first administrator you need to login using the internal TWiki admin user login and the password you defined in configure.

  • Navigate to the Main.TWikiAdminGroup topic
  • Follow carefully the steps Main.TWikiAdminGroup of how to become an admin
  • Note that if you use ApacheLogin you have to be registered and logged in before you use the internal admin login

Set TWiki Preferences

Preferences for customizing many aspects of TWiki are set simply by editing a special topic with TWiki.

  • TWiki.TWikiPreferences. Read through it and identify any additional settings or changes you think you might need. You can edit the settings in TWiki.TWikiPreferences but these will be overwritten when you later upgrade to a newer TWiki version. Instead copy any settings or variables that you want to customize from TWiki.TWikiPreferences and paste them into Main.TWikiPreferences. When you later upgrade TWiki simply avoid overwriting the data/Main/TWikiPreferences.txt file and all your settings will be kept. Settings in Main.TWikiPreferences overrides settings in both TWiki.TWikiPreferences and any settings defined in Plugin topics. See notes at top of TWiki.TWikiPreferences for more information.

Enable Email Notification

Each TWiki web has an automatic email notification service that sends you an email with links to all of the topics modified since the last alert. To enable this service:

  1. Confirm the Mail and Proxies settings in the Configure interface.
  2. Setup a cron job (or equivalent) to call the tools/mailnotify script as described in the TWiki.MailerContrib topic.

Enable WebStatistics

You can generate a listing manually, or on an automated schedule, of visits to individual pages, on a per web basis. For information on setting up this feature, see the TWiki.TWikiSiteTools topic.

Automate removal of expired sessions and lease files

Per default TWiki cleans out expired session and lease files each time any topic is viewed. This however cost performance. It is an advantage to define a negative value in configure for {Sessions}{ExpireAfter} and install let cron run the tools/tick_twiki.pl script. Read The topic TWikiScripts#tick_twiki_pl for details how to do this.

Enable Localisation

TWiki now supports displaying of national (non-ascii) characters and presentation of basic interface elements in different languages. To enable these features, see the Localisation section of configure. For more information about these features, see TWiki:TWiki.InternationalizationSupplement.

Tailor New Users Home Topic

When a new users registers on your TWiki, a home topic is created for them based on the TWiki.NewUserTemplate topic (and its TWiki.UserForm). It contains additional resources you can use to:

  • Localise the user topic.
  • Add a default ALLOWTOPICCHANGE so only the user can edit their own home topic. We do not encourage this for Intranet sites as it sends a wrong signal to new users, but it can be necessary on a public TWiki to prevent spam.
  • Add and remove fields defined in the TWiki.UserForm

If you choose to tailor anything you are strongly adviced to copy NewUserTemplate and UserForm to the Main web and tailor the Main web copies. TWiki will look for the NewUserTemplate in the Main web first and if it does not exist it uses the default from the TWiki web. By creating a Main.NewUserTemplate and its Main.UserForm you will not loose your tailorings next time you upgrade TWiki.

If you added or removed fields from the user form you may also need to tailor TWiki.TWikiRegistration.

Install Plugins

TWiki:Plugins is an extensive library of Plugins for TWiki, that enhance functionality in a huge number of ways. A few plugins are pre-installed in the TWiki distribution. For more information on these, see TWiki.InstalledPlugins.

You activate installed plugin in the Plugins section of configure. In this section you also find a Find More Extensions button which opens an application which can install additional plugins from the TWiki.org website. If you are behind a firewall or your server has no access to the Internet it is also possible to install plugins manually. Manual installation instructions for the plugins can be found in the plugin topics on TWiki.org. Additional documenation on TWiki plugins can be found at TWiki:TWiki.TWikiPluginsSupplement.

Some plugins require that you define their settings in configure. You fill find these under the Extensions section of configure.

Customize Your TWiki!

The real power of TWiki lies in it's flexibility to be customized to meet your needs. You can with small means change the looks of the default skin (called PatternSkin) by reading the TWiki.PatternSkinCustomization

At the official TWiki website you can find more resources. A good place to start for exploring what's possible is TWiki:TWiki.TWikiAdminCookBook which offers tips and tricks for customizing your TWiki site. Many of these are appropriate to implement immediately after installing TWiki and before adding content so now's a good time to look at these.

Customization of Special Pages

Some pages are meant to be customized after choice of authentication. If you do not use the internal TWiki password manager the topics that contains the features for changing and resetting passwords and changing the email address should be changed to a note describing how to perform these tasks in your organization. The topics are:

  • TWiki.ChangePassword
  • TWiki.ResetPassword
  • TWiki.ChangeEmailAddress

WYSIWYG vs Raw Edit

From TWiki release 4.2.0 the WYSIWYG editor has been replaced by a much better and more powerful editor and it was decided that WYSIWYG would be the default edit mode. An Edit Raw link is available for those that have a need or preference for this mode.

However you may prefer to have the same user interface as in TWiki 4.1 where Edit was the raw text editor and you had a WYSIWYG button. You can modify the templates that define the buttons by following the description on TWiki:Codev.TWikiRawEditDefault04x02.

Copyright, License and Classification Statements

In the bottom of each topic you will find a default copyright messages saying "Copyright &© by the contributing authors. All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors." It is a setting WEBCOPYRIGHT that defines this. This is often not adequate.

  • If your TWiki is used in a commercial application without public access you should replace this by your normal copyright notice. You should also consider adding classifications (e.g. For Internal Use Only) so people do not have to add this manually to every new topic.
  • If your TWiki is public with public access you need to decide which copyright and license the contributions should be covered by. For open source type applications licenses such as the GNU Free Documentation License, FreeBSD Documentation License, and Creative Commons license are possible licenses to consider. Remember that once people have started contributing it is difficult and not correct to change or impose licenses on existing contributions.

You change the copy right statement globally by taking these steps.

  • Copy the setting WEBCOPYRIGHT from TWiki.TWikiPreferences to Main.TWikiPreferences and alter the copied text to your need.
  • You can create a unique message for each web by adding the WEBCOPYRIGHT setting to WebPreferences in each web. E.g. adding a confidencial classification to a very restricted web.
  • The WEBCOPYRIGHT in TWiki.WebPreferences covers the documentation that comes with TWiki and is covered by the original TWiki Copyright and GPL License. You will normally leave this unchanged.

Troubleshooting

The first step is to re-run the configure script and make sure you have resolved all errors, and are satisfied that you understand any warnings.

Failing that, please check TWiki:TWiki.InstallingTWiki on TWiki.org, the supplemental documentation that help you install TWiki on different platforms, environments and web hosting sites. For example:

It is also advisable to review TWiki:Codev.KnownIssuesOfTWiki04x02.

If you need help, ask a question in the TWiki:Support web or on TWiki:Codev/TWikiIRC (irc.freenode.net, channel #twiki)

Appendices

TWiki System Requirements

Low client and server base requirements are core features that keep TWiki widely deployable, particularly across a range of browser platforms and versions.

Server Requirements

TWiki is written in Perl 5, uses a number of shell commands, and requires RCS (Revision Control System), a GNU Free Software package. TWiki is developed in a basic Linux/Apache environment. It also works with Microsoft Windows, and should have no problem on any other platform that meets the requirements.

Resource Required Server Environment
Perl 5.8.4 or higher is recommended
RCS 5.7 or higher (including GNU diff)
Optional, TWiki includes a pure perl implementation of RCS that can be used instead (although it's slower)
GNU diff GNU diff 2.7 or higher is required when not using the all-Perl RcsLite? .
Install on PATH if not included with RCS (check version with diff -v)
Must be the version used by RCS, to avoid problems with binary attachments - RCS may have hard-coded path to diff
Other external programs fgrep, egrep
Cron/scheduler • Unix: cron
• Windows: cron equivalents
Web server Apache is well supported; for information on other servers, see TWiki:TWiki.InstallingTWiki#OtherWebServers.

Required CPAN Modules

Most of the CPAN libraries listesd below are part of a standard Perl installation so you most likely have them all!

See TWiki:TWiki.HowToInstallCpanModules for detailed information on how to install CPAN libraries

The following Perl CPAN modules are used by TWiki:

Module Preferred version
Algorithm::Diff (included)  
CGI::Carp >=1.26
Config >=0
Cwd >=3.05
Data::Dumper >=2.121
Error (included)  
File::Copy >=2.06
File::Find >=1.05
File::Spec >=3.05
FileHandle >=2.01
IO::File >=1.10
Text::Diff (included)  
Time::Local >=1.11

Optional CPAN Modules

The following Perl modules may be used by TWiki:

See TWiki:TWiki.HowToInstallCpanModules for detailed information on how to install CPAN libraries

Module Preferred version Description
Archive::Tar   May be required by the Extensions Installer in configure if command line tar or unzip is not available
CGI::Cookie >=1.24 Used for session support
CGI::Session >=3.95 Highly recommended! Used for session support
Digest::base    
Digest::SHA1    
Jcode   Used for I18N support with perl 5.6
Locale::Maketext::Lexicon >=0 Used for I18N support
Net::SMTP >=2.29 Used for sending mail
Unicode::Map   Used for I18N support with perl 5.6
Unicode::Map8   Used for I18N support with perl 5.6
Unicode::MapUTF8   Used for I18N support with perl 5.6
Unicode::String   Used for I18N support with perl 5.6
URI   Used for configure

Most of them will probably already be available in your installation. You can check version numbers with the configure script, or if you're still trying to get to that point, check from the command line like this: 

perl -e 'use FileHandle; print $FileHandle::VERSION."\n"'

Client Requirements

The TWiki standard installation has relatively low browser requirements:

  • HTML 3.2 compliant
  • Cookies, if persistent sessions are required

CSS and Javascript are used in most skins, although there is a low-fat skin (Classic skin) available that minimises these requirements. Some skins will require more recent releases of browsers. The default skin (Pattern) is tested on IE 6, Safari, and Mozilla 5.0 based browsers (such as Firefox).

You can easily select a balance of browser capability versus look and feel. Try the installed skins at TWiki/TWikiSkinBrowser and more at TWiki:Plugins.SkinPackage.

Important note about TWiki Plugins

  • Plugins can require just about anything - browser-specific functions, stylesheets (CSS), Java applets, cookies, specific Perl modules,... - check the individual Plugin specs.
    • TIP Note: Plugins included in the TWiki distribution do not add requirements, except for the CommentPlugin which requires Perl 5.6.1.

Notes on Installing TWiki on Non-Root Account

The following supplemental notes to the Basic Installation instructions apply to installing TWiki on a system where you don't have Unix/Linux root (administrator) privileges, for example, on a hosted Web account or an intranet server administered by someone else.

Referring to the Basic Installation steps presented above:

  • Step 2: If you cannot unpack the TWiki distribution directly in your installation directory, you can unpack the distribution on your local PC and then manually create the directory structure on your host server and upload the files as follows:
    • Using the table below, create a directory structure on your host server
    • Upload the TWiki files by FTP (transfer as text except for the image files in pub directory.)
    • Note: Don't worry if you are not able to put the twiki/lib directory at the same level as the twiki/bin directory (e.g. because CGI bin directories can't be under your home directory and you don't have root access). You can create this directory elsewhere and configure the twiki/bin/setlib.cfg file (done in Step 2).

TWiki dir: What it is: Where to copy: Example:
twiki start-up pages root TWiki dir /home/smith/twiki/
twiki/bin CGI bin CGI-enabled dir /home/smith/twiki/bin
twiki/lib library files same level as twiki/bin /home/smith/twiki/lib
twiki/locale language files dir secure from public access /home/smith/twiki/locale
twiki/pub public files htdoc enabled dir /home/smith/twiki/pub
twiki/data topic data dir secure from public access /home/smith/twiki/data
twiki/templates web templates dir secure from public access /home/smith/twiki/templates
twiki/tools TWiki utlilities dir secure from public access /home/smith/twiki/tools
twiki/working Temporary and internal files dir secure from public access /home/smith/twiki/working

  • Step 3: Files in the pub directory must be readable as a url. This means that directory permissions should be set to 755 (or 775 ) and file permissions should be set to 644 (or 664). If you can run a chmod command, you can accomplish this in two quick steps by running these commands from the root direct:
    • chmod -R 755 pub
    • chmod 644 `find pub -type f -print`
    • In addition, you should create a .htaccess file in the pub directory, using the template included in the root level of the distribution entitled pub-htaccess.txt.
    • Note: This setup does not provide for absolute security for TWiki attachments. For more information, see TWiki:Codev.SecuringYourTWiki.

  • Step 6: In order to run the configure script, create a file called .htaccess in the bin directory that includes the following single line: SetHandler cgi-script . This informs the server to treat all the perl scripts in the bin directory as scripts.

For additional information about installing TWiki on a hosted accounts, see TWiki:TWiki.InstallingTWiki#WebHostingSites

Installing Manually Without Configure

It is highly recommended to use run configure from the browser when setting up TWiki. Configure does a lot of the hard work for you.

But there may be instances where you do not want to use configure or where configure simply won't run because of a missing dependency.

The manual steps you have to take are:

  • Copy the file lib/TWiki.spec to lib/LocalSite.cfg
  • Remove the comment # in front of $TWiki::cfg{DefaultUrlHost}, $TWiki::cfg{ScriptUrlPath}, $TWiki::cfg{PubUrlPath}, $TWiki::cfg{PubDir}, $TWiki::cfg{TemplateDir}, $TWiki::cfg{DataDir}, $TWiki::cfg{LocalesDir}, and $TWiki::cfg{OS} and make sure these settings have the correct values.
  • Make sure to define at least these settings: $TWiki::cfg{LoginManager}, $TWiki::cfg{WebMasterEmail}, $TWiki::cfg{SMTP}{MAILHOST}, $TWiki::cfg{SMTP}{SENDERHOST}.

TWiki Upgrade Guide

This guide covers upgrading from a previous version of TWiki (such as Cairo or TWiki4.0) to TWiki 4.2

Overview

TWiki-4.0.0 was a major new release. TWiki-4.1.0 was a minor release without dramatic changes since 4.0.0. TWiki-4.2.0 is also a minor release containing a few new features that can be seen by the end user, a large number of bug fixes, and a face lift for the skin. It also contains some important updates under the hood to the way users are handled which enables new types of authentication and integration with other systems. The most important new feature is the QuerySearch feature.

Upgrade Requirements

  • Please review the AdminSkillsAssumptions before you upgrade TWiki
  • Review TWiki:TWiki.TWikiUpgradeTo04x02 for latest information and experience notes.
  • To upgrade from a release prior to TWiki Release 01-Sep-2004, start with TWiki:TWiki.UpgradingTWiki on TWiki.org
  • To upgrade from a standard TWiki Release 01-Sep-2004 to the latest TWiki-4.X Production Release, follow the instructions below
  • Once the upgrade has been applied, an existing earlier installation will still be able to read all the topics, but should not be used to write. Make sure you take a backup!
  • Not all Plugins written for TWiki Release 01-Sep-2004 are fully supported with 4.X. Make sure the Plugins you use can be upgraded as well!

Major Changes Compared to TWiki Release 01-Sep-2004 and TWiki Release 4.0.0

See TWikiReleaseNotes04x00, TWikiReleaseNotes04x01 and TWikiReleaseNotes04x02

Upgrade Procedure

The following steps are a rough guide to upgrading only. It is impossible to give detailed instructions, as what you have to do may depend on whether you can configure the webserver or not, and how much you have changed distributed files in your current TWiki release.

The main steps are:

  1. Install the new TWiki version, configure it, and get it to work similar to the old version
  2. Install additional extensions (Plugins). Make sure to use the latest versions
  3. Copy all the non-default webs from the old installation to the new
  4. Copy the users from old installation to the new incl all their topics from Main
  5. Apply tailorings to your Skin (logos, menu bars etc)
  6. Apply preferences from old installation

Installation

  • Follow the installation instructions in INSTALL.html which you find in the root of the new installation. Install the new release in a new directory. Do not install on top of the old release.
  • Use the configure script to configure TWiki.
    • If you are upgrading from a 4.x.x release, you can carry over the configure settings from the old release.
    • You need to run configure and save the configuration once when you upgrade as this will update the altered and added settings.
    • You can also choose to start with a fresh configuration and walk through all the settings using your old LocalSite.cfg as a reference. This way you will not have old obsolete settings in the new LocalSite.cfg.
    • If at any time during the installation you want to start over from fresh all you need to do is delete the lib/LocalSite.cfg file and re-run configure.
  • Additional resources
  • Make sure you have a working basic TWiki before you continue

Install Extensions

  • Note that not all extensions that worked in Cairo have been updated to work with TWiki4.X. Many Cairo plugins work fine. Some do not. Many plugins have been upgraded to work with TWiki4.0 and later.
  • From TWiki-4.1.0 the configure script which you ran during installation supports installation of additional plugins.
  • Manual installation is possible. Follow the instruction on the Plugin page at twiki.org.
  • Check the plugin topics from your old TWiki installation. There may be plugin settings that you want to transfer to the new TWiki installation.
    HELP Hint: For an easier upgrade later on, set the plugin preferences settings in the Main.TWikiPreferences topic, not in the plugin topic. To identify the plugin, prefix the name of the setting with the capitalized name of the plugin. For example, to change the DEFAULT_TYPE setting of the CommentPlugin, create a COMMENTPLUGIN_DEFAULT_TYPE setting in Main.TWikiPreferences.
  • Typical plugin settings you may have altered.
    • CommentPlugin - Set DEFAULT_TYPE
    • EditTablePlugin - Set CHANGEROWS, Set QUIETSAVE, and Set EDITBUTTON
    • InterwikiPlugin - Set RULESTOPIC
    • InterWikis - If you added your own rules you should save this topic and not overwrite it.
    • SlideShowPlugin - Make sure you did not change the embedded 'Default Slide Template' If you did you should save it. It is a bad idea to do. It is better to define your own slide show templates as separate topics that do not get overwritten when you upgrade.
    • SmiliesPlugin - Did you add your own smileys? No real changes were made to the smilies topic October 2005 so you can just leave this topic as it is.
    • TablePlugin - Set TABLEATTRIBUTES
  • Remember that a plugin must be activated in configure.
  • To avoid having to re-apply plugin settings each time you upgrade a plugin or TWiki itself, define the altered plugin settings in Main.TWikiPreferences instead

Copy your old webs to new TWiki

  • When upgrading from Cairo or earlier it may be necessary to unlock the rcs files in data and pub directories from the old installation using the following shell commands:
    • find data -name '*,v' -exec rcs -u -M '{}' \;
    • find pub -name '*,v' -exec rcs -u -M '{}' \;
  • Copy your local webs over to the data and pub directories of the new install. Do not copy the default webs: TWiki, Main, Trash, Sandbox, _default, and _empty.
  • Make sure all data and pub files and directories are owned by the webserver user.
  • Note: TWiki's WebChanges topics depend on the file timestamp. If you touch the .txt files make sure to preserve the timestamp, or to change them in the sequence of old file timestamps.

Copy Users And Their Topics From Main Web

  • Copy all the topics from the Main web and corresponding pub/Main directories from the old TWiki to the new TWiki but do not overwrite any of the new topics already inside the new Main directory!
  • Manually merge all the users from the old Main.TWikiUsers topic to the new TWiki. If you upgrade from Cairo you can simply use the old file and add the missing new system users to the list of users. If you upgrade from TWiki-4.0.X simply use the old topic. Starting from 4.2.0 TWiki no longer ships with a Main.TWikiUsers topic. When you register the first user TWiki now checks for an existing Main.TWikiUsers and if it does not exist it gets created.
  • If you use data/.htpasswd for authentication copy this file from the old TWiki to the new.
    • If you upgrade from Cairo and you are using the Htpasswd login manager, then note that email addresses for users have moved out of user topics and into the password file. There is a script that performs this extra upgrade step for you - see tools/upgrade_emails.pl.
  • The old sandbox web may have a lot of useful topic and users may use it actively for drafts. Manually select the topics (remember the corresponding pub directories) from the old Sandbox web and copy them to the new TWiki. Decide if you want to overwrite the sandbox homepage and left menu bar or keep the new.
  • If you added or removed fields from the user topic form you may also have tailored TWiki.TWikiRegistration. Make sure you either reuse the registration topic from the old installation or apply the same field changes to the new TWiki.TWikiRegistration topic.
  • Starting from 4.2.0 TWiki ships with NewUserTemplate and UserForm in the TWiki web. If you choose to tailor anything you are strongly adviced to copy NewUserTemplate and UserForm to the Main web and tailor the Main web copies. TWiki will look for the NewUserTemplate in the Main web first and if it does not exist it uses the default from the TWiki web. By creating a Main.NewUserTemplate and its Main.UserForm you will not loose your tailorings next time you upgrade TWiki.
  • Make sure all data and pub files and directories are owned by the webserver user.

Apply Customizations To The Skin

Apply Preferences From Old Installation

  • Transfer any customized and local settings from TWiki.TWikiPreferences to the topic pointed at by {LocalSitePreferences} (Main.TWikiPreferences). Per default this is Main.TWikiPreferences. This avoids having to write over files in the distribution on a later upgrade.
  • If you changed any of the topics in the original TWiki distribution, you will have to transfer your changes to the new install manually. There is no simple way to do this, though a suggestion is to use 'diff' to find changed files in the data/TWiki of the old and new TWiki installation, and transfer the changes into the new TWiki install. If you can run a GUI on your server, you may find that using a visual diff tool like WinMerge, meld, kdiff3, xxdiff, etc. is helpful.
  • Compare the WebPreferences topics in the old TWiki Installation with the default from the new TWiki installation and add any new Preferences that may be relevant.
  • Compare the WebLeftBar topics in the old TWiki Installation with the default from the new TWiki installation and add any new feature that you desire.

Customization of Special Pages

Some pages in the TWiki web are meant to be customized after choice of authentication. If you do not use the internal TWiki password manager the topics that contains the features for changing and resetting passwords and changing the email address should be changed to a note describing how to perform these tasks in your organization. If you have made such customizations remember to replace these topics in the TWiki web with the tailored versions from your old installation. The topics are:

  • TWiki.ChangePassword
  • TWiki.ResetPassword
  • TWiki.ChangeEmailAddress

Upgrading from Cairo to TWiki4 (additional advice)

Favicon

TWiki4's PatternSkin introduces the use of the favicon feature which most browsers use to show a small icon in front of the URL and for bookmarks.

In TWiki4 it is assumed that each web has a favicon.ico file attached to the WebPreferences topic. When you upgrade from Cairo to TWiki4 you do not have this file and you will get flooded with errors the error log of your web server. There are two solutions to this.

  • Attach a favicon.ico file to WebPreferences in each web.
  • Preferred: Change the setting of the location of favicon.ico in TWikiPreferences so all webs use the favicon.ico from the TWiki web. This is the fastest and easiest solution.

To change the location of favicon.ico in TWikiPreferences to the TWiki web add this line to TWikiPreferences 

   * Set FAVICON = %PUBURLPATH%/%SYSTEMWEB%/%WEBPREFSTOPIC%/favicon.ico

TWikiUsers topic in Main web

Your Cairo Main.TWikiUsers topic will work in TWiki4 but you will need to ensure that these 4 users from the default TWiki4 version of TWikiUsers are copied to the existing TWikiUsers topic. TWikiGuest is probably already there but the others are new

  • TWikiContributor - placeholder for a TWiki developer, and is used in TWiki documentation
  • TWikiGuest - guest user, used as a fallback if the user can't be identified
  • TWikiRegistrationAgent - special user used during the new user registration process
  • UnknownUser - used where the author of a previously stored piece of data can't be determined

You additionally need to ensure that TWikiUsers has the Set ALLOWTOPICCHANGE = TWikiAdminGroup, TWikiRegistrationAgent. Otherwise people will not be able to register.

Important Changes since 4.0.5

Supported Perl version

TWiki 4.0.5 worked on Perl version 5.6.X. Reports from users has shown that unfortunately TWiki 4.1.0 does not support Perl versions older then 5.8.0. It is the goal that TWiki should work on at least Perl version 5.6.X but none of the developers have had access to Perl installations older than 5.8.0.

Since TWiki 4.1.0 has some urgent bugs the development team decided to release TWiki 4.1.1 without resolving the issue with Perl 5.6.X. We will however address this and try and resolve it for a planned 4.1.2 release. The TWiki community is very interested in contributions from users that have fixes for the code which will enable TWiki to run on older versions of Perl.

See the WhatVersionsOfPerlAreSupported topic to keep up to date with the discussion how to get back support for earlier Perl versions.

Template spec changed

Until TWiki 4.0.5 TWikiTemplates the text inside template definition blocks (anything between %TMPL:DEF{"block"}% and %TMPL:END% was stripped of leading and trailing white space incl new lines.

This caused a lot of problems for skin developers when you wanted a newline before or after the block text.

From TWiki 4.1.0 this has changed so that white space is no longer stripped. Skins like PatternSkin and NatSkin have been updated so that they work with the new behavior. But if you use an older skin or have written your own you will most likely need to make some adjustments.

It is not difficult. The general rule is - if you get mysterious blank lines in your skin, the newline after the %TMPL:DEF{"block"}% needs to be removed. Ie. the content of the block must follow on the same line as the TMPL:DEF.

The spec change have the same impact on CommentPlugin templates where you may have to remove the first line break after the TMPL:DEF. See the CommentPluginTemplate for examples of how comment template definitions should look like in TWiki-4.1.X

An example: A CommentPlugin template that adds a comment as appending a row to a table. Before the spec change this would work. 

<verbatim>
%TMPL:DEF{OUTPUT:tabletest}%%POS:BEFORE%
|%URLPARAM{"comment"}%| -- %WIKIUSERNAME% - %DATE% |
%TMPL:END%
</verbatim>

From Twiki 4.1.0 the old template definition will add an empty line before the new table row. To fix it simply remove the new line before the table. 

<verbatim>
%TMPL:DEF{OUTPUT:tabletest}%%POS:BEFORE%|%URLPARAM{"comment"}%| -- %WIKIUSERNAME% - %DATE% |
%TMPL:END%
</verbatim>

The advantage of the spec change is that now you can add leading and trailing white space including new lines. This was not possible before.

Important Changes since 4.1.0

New location for session and other temporary files

An upgrader upgrading to 4.1.1 should note the following important change

The directory for passthrough files and session files have been replaced by a common directory for temporary files used by TWiki. Previously the two configure settings {PassthroughDir} and {Sessions}{Dir} were by default set to /tmp. These config settings have been replaced by {TempfileDir} with the default setting value /tmp/twiki. If the twiki directory does not exist twiki will create it first time it needs it.

It is highly recommended no longer to use the tmp directory common to other web applications and the new default will work fine for most. You may want to delete all the old session files in /tmp after the upgrade to 4.1.1. They all start with cgisess_. It is additionally highly recommended to limit write access to the {TempfileDir} for security reasons if you have non-admin users with login access to the webserver just like you would do with the other webserver directories.

Important Changes since 4.1.2

New WYSIWYG Editor

TWiki now ships with a new WYSIWYG editor based on TinyMCE replaces the Kupu based editor.
TinyMCE is not a perfect Wysiwyg editor but it is magnitudes better than the Kupu editor

The WysiwygPlugin that drives the engine behind both TinyMCE has additionally been heavily improved so that less TWiki Applications are negatively affected by editing WYSIWYG

When TinyMCEPlugin is enabled the Edit button per default becomes WYSIWYG editing mode. A new Raw Edit link has been added to enable application developers to edit the good old way

The WYSIWYG button has been removed.

NEWTOPICLINKSYMBOL removed

The NEWTOPICLINKSYMBOL preference which was deprecated in 4.1 has now been removed from the code. If you want to control the appearance of new links, you can use NEWLINKFORMAT.

UserForm and NewUserTemplate Customization

When a new user registers on TWiki his user topic is created based on the NewUserTemplate and UserForm.

The NewUserTemplate was located in the TWiki web and the UserForm in the Main web. When upgrading TWiki these were some of the topics you had to take care not to overwrite.

From 4.2.0 the UserForm and NewUserTemplate are distributed in the TWiki web. If you create the two in the Main web the Main web version will be used instead. So if you tailor the user topic format or the form then you should always copy the two files to the Main web and modify the ones in the Main web. When you later upgrade TWiki your tailored template and form will not be overwritten.

TWikiUsers no longer distributed

The Main.TWikiUsers topic contains all the registered users. It is a topic you do not want to overwrite when you upgrade TWiki.

From 4.2.0 this file is no longer included in the TWiki distribution. When you register the first time TWiki creates the Main.TWikiUsers topic in the Main web if it does not exist already. This means that you can now upgrade TWiki without risk of overwriting the important TWikiUsers topic.

  • For new installers this makes no difference at all
  • For upgraders this is one less problem to worry about as your important Main.TWikiUsers topic now no longer gets overwritten when upgrading.

New working directory

A new directory working which per default is located in the twiki root, has been introduced which contains:

  • registration_approvals - with 4.2.0 it is moved to here from the data directory)
  • tmp - so we now avoid having to fight with special access rights and /tmp directory that gets cleaned out when booting.
  • work_areas - with 4.2.0 it is moved to here from the pub directory. Configure automatically moved the directory when you upgrade.

Note: Remember to restrict access to this new directory when you upgrade.

The configuration setting {WorkingDir} defines the container directory for temporary files, extensions' work areas, and intermediate registration data. The default is working under your installation root.

Take care for that change if you run your own routine to delete obsolete session files, which will now be found under working/tmp/cgisess*.

New Internal Admin Login

TWiki 4.2 introduces a new Internal Admin Login feature which uses "admin" (configurable) as username and the password used for configure to become temporary administrator. When you do a new installation you need to use this feature as Main.TWikiAdminGroup is now access restricted by default to avoid security attacks during the hours an installation may take. From configure there is a link to the TWikiAdminGroup topic and on TWikiAdminGroup the step by step instructions are written in a yellow box. Our advice is not to remove this help text in case you need it later.

TWiki User Authentication

TWiki site access control and user activity tracking options

Overview

Authentication, or "login", is the process by which a user lets TWiki know who they are.

Authentication isn't just to do with access control. TWiki uses authentication to identify users, so it can keep track of who made changes, and manage a wide range of personal settings. With authentication enabled, users can personalise TWiki and contribute as recognised individuals, instead of shadows.

TWiki authentication is very flexible, and can either stand alone or integrate with existing authentication schemes. You can set up TWiki to require authentication for every access, or only for changes. Authentication is also essential for access control.

Quick Authentication Test - Use the %USERINFO% variable to return your current identity:

TWiki user authentication is split into four sections; password management, user mapping, user registration, and login management. Password management deals with how users personal data is stored. Registration deals with how new users are added to the wiki. Login management deals with how users log in.

Once a user is logged on, they can be remembered using a Client Session stored in a cookie in the browser (or by other less elegant means if the user has disabled cookies). This avoids them having to log on again and again.

TWiki user authentication is configured through the Security Settings pane in the configure interface.

Please note FileAttachments are not protected by TWiki User Authentication.

TIP Tip: TWiki:TWiki.TWikiUserAuthenticationSupplement on TWiki.org has supplemental documentation on user authentication.

Password Management

As shipped, TWiki supports the Apache 'htpasswd' password manager. This manager supports the use of .htpasswd files on the server. These files can be unique to TWiki, or can be shared with other applications (such as an Apache webserver). A variety of password encodings are supported for flexibility when re-using existing files. See the descriptive comments in the Security Settings section of the [[/twiki/bin/configure][configure] interface for more details.

You can easily plug in alternate password management modules to support interfaces to other third-party authentication databases.

User Mapping

Often when you are using an external authentication method, you want to map from an unfriendly "login name" to a more friendly WikiName. Also, an external authentication database may well have user information you want to import to TWiki, such as user groups.

By default, TWiki supports mapping of usernames to wikinames, and supports TWiki groups internal to TWiki. If you want, you can plug in an alternate user mapping module to support import of groups etc.

User Registration

New user registration uses the password manager to set and change passwords and store email addresses. It is also responsible for the new user verification process. the registration process supports single user registration via the TWikiRegistration page, and bulk user registration via the BulkRegistration page (for admins only).

The registration process is also responsible for creating user topics, and setting up the mapping information used by the User Mapping support.

Login Management

Login management controls the way users have to log in. There are three basic options; no login, login via a TWiki login page, and login using the webserver authentication support.

No Login (select none in configure)

Does exactly what it says on the tin. Forget about authentication to make your site completely public - anyone can browse and edit freely, in classic Wiki style. All visitors are given the TWikiGuest default identity, so you can't track individual user activity.

ALERT! Note: This setup is not recommended on public websites for security reasons; anyone would be able to change system settings and perform tasks usually restricted to administrators.

Template Login (select TWiki::Client::TemplateLogin in configure)

Template Login asks for a username and password in a web page, and processes them using whatever Password Manager you choose. Users can log in and log out. Client Sessions are used to remember users. Users can choose to have their session remembered so they will automatically be logged in the next time they start their browser.

Enabling Template Login

  1. Use the configure interface to
    1. select the TWiki::Client::TemplateLogin login manager (on the Security Settings pane).
    2. select the appropriate password manager for your system, or provide your own.
  2. Register yourself in the TWikiRegistration topic.
    HELP Check that the password manager recognises the new user. If you are using .htpasswd files, check that a new line with the username and encrypted password is added to the .htpasswd file. If not, you probably got a path wrong, or the permissions may not allow the webserver user to write to that file.
  3. Create a new topic to check if authentication works.
  4. Edit the TWikiAdminGroup topic in the Main web to include users with system administrator status.
    ALERT! This is a very important step, as users in this group can access all topics, independent of TWiki access controls.

TWikiAccessControl has more information on setting up access controls.

ALERT! At this time TWikiAccessControls cannot control access to files in the pub area, unless they are only accessed through the viewfile script. If your pub directory is set up in the webserver to allow open access you may want to add .htaccess files in there to restrict access.

TIP You can create a custom version of the TWikiRegistration form by copying the topic, and then deleting or adding input tags in your copy. The name="" parameter of the input tags must start with: "Twk0..." (if this is an optional entry), or "Twk1..." (if this is a required entry). This ensures that the fields are carried over into the user home page correctly. Do not modify the version of TWikiRegistration shipped with TWiki, as your changes will be overwritten next time you upgrade.

TIP The default new user template page is in TWiki.NewUserTemplate. The same variables get expanded as in the template topics. You can create a custom new user home page by creating the Main.NewUserTemplate? topic, which will then override the default.

Apache Login (select TWiki::Client::ApacheLogin in configure)

Using this method TWiki does not authenticate users internally. Instead it depends on the REMOTE_USER environment variable, which is set when you enable authentication in the webserver.

The advantage of this scheme is that if you have an existing website authentication scheme using Apache modules such as mod_auth_ldap or mod_auth_mysql you can just plug in directly to them.

The disadvantage is that because the user identity is cached in the browser, you can log in, but you can't log out again unless you restart the browser.

TWiki maps the REMOTE_USER that was used to log in to the webserver to a WikiName using the table in TWikiUsers. This table is updated whenever a user registers, so users can choose not to register (in which case their webserver login name is used for their signature) or register (in which case that login name is mapped to their WikiName).

The same private .htpasswd file used in TWiki Template Login can be used to authenticate Apache users, using the Apache Basic Authentication support.

Warning: Do not use the Apache htpasswd program with .htpasswd files generated by TWiki! htpasswd wipes out email addresses that TWiki plants in the info fields of this file.

Enabling Apache Login using mod_auth

You can use any other Apache authentication module that sets REMOTE_USER.
  1. Use configure to select the TWiki::Client::ApacheLogin login manager.
  2. Use configure to set up TWiki to create the right kind of .htpasswd entries.
  3. Create a .htaccess file in the twiki/bin directory.
    HELP There is an template for this file in twiki/bin/.htaccess.txt that you can copy and change. The comments in the file explain what need to be done.
    HELP If you got it right, the browser should now ask for login name and password when you click on the Edit. If .htaccess does not have the desired effect, you may need to "AllowOverride All" for the directory in httpd.conf (if you have root access; otherwise, e-mail web server support)
    ALERT! At this time TWikiAccessControls do not control access to files in the pub area, unless they are only accessed through the viewfile script. If your pub directory is set up to allow open access you may want to add .htaccess files in there as well to restrict access
  4. You can create a custom version of the TWikiRegistration form by copying the default topic, and then deleting or adding input tags in your copy. The name="" parameter of the input tags must start with: "Twk0..." (if this is an optional entry), or "Twk1..." (if this is a required entry). This ensures that the fields are carried over into the user home page correctly. Do not modify the version of TWikiRegistration shipped with TWiki, as your changes will be overwritten next time you upgrade.
    The default new user template page is in TWiki.NewUserTemplate. The same variables get expanded as in the template topics. You can create a custom new user home page by creating the Main.NewUserTemplate? topic, which will then override the default.
  5. Register yourself in the TWikiRegistration topic.
    HELP Check that a new line with the username and encrypted password is added to the .htpasswd file. If not, you may have got a path wrong, or the permissions may not allow the webserver user to write to that file.
  6. Create a new topic to check if authentication works.
  7. Edit the TWikiAdminGroup topic in the Main web to include users with system administrator status.
    ALERT! This is a very important step, as users in this group can access all topics, independent of TWiki access controls.
TWikiAccessControl has more information on setting up access controls.

Logons via bin/logon

Any time a user enters a page that needs authentication, they will be forced to log on. It may be convenient to have a "logon" as well, to give the system a chance to identify the user and retrieve their personal settings. It may be convenient to force them to log on.

The bin/logon script accomplishes this. The bin/logon script must be setup in the bin/.htaccess file to be a script which requires a valid user. However, once authenticated, it will simply redirect the user to the view URL for the page from which the logon script was linked.

Sessions

TWiki uses the CPAN:CGI::Session and CPAN:CGI::Cookie modules to track sessions. These modules are de facto standards for session management among Perl programmers. If you can't use Cookies for any reason, CPAN:CGI::Session also supports session tracking using the client IP address.

You don't have to enable sessions to support logins in TWiki. However it is strongly recommended. TWiki needs some way to remember the fact that you logged in from a particular browser, and it uses sessions to do this. If you don;t enable sessions, TWiki will try hard to remember you, but due to limitations in the browsers it may also forget you (and then suddenly remember you again later!). So for the best user experience, you should enable sessions.

There are a number of TWikiVariables available that you can use to interrogate your current session. You can even add your own session variables to the TWiki cookie. Session variables are referred to as "sticky" variables.

Getting, Setting, and Clearing Session Variables

You can get, set, and clear session variables from within TWiki web pages or by using script parameters. This allows you to use the session as a personal "persistent memory space" that is not lost until the web browser is closed. Also note that if a session variable has the same name as a TWiki preference, the session variables value takes precedence over the TWiki preference. This allows for per-session preferences.

To make use of these features, use the tags: 

%SESSION_VARIABLE{ "varName" }%
%SESSION_VARIABLE{ "varName" set="varValue" }%
%SESSION_VARIABLE{ "varName" clear="" }%

Note that you cannot override access controls preferences this way.

Cookies and Transparent Session IDs

TWiki normally uses cookies to store session information on a client computer. Cookies are a common way to pass session information from client to server. TWiki cookies simply hold a unique session identifier that is used to look up a database of session information on the TWiki server.

For a number of reasons, it may not be possible to use cookies. In this case, TWiki has a fallback mechanism; it will automatically rewrite every internal URL it sees on pages being generated to one that also passes session information.

TWiki Username vs. Login Username

This section applies only if you are using authentication with existing login names (i.e. mapping from login names to WikiNames).

TWiki internally manages two usernames: Login Username and TWiki Username.

  • Login Username: When you login to the intranet, you use your existing login username, ex: pthoeny. This name is normally passed to TWiki by the REMOTE_USER environment variable, and used internally. Login Usernames are maintained by your system administrator.

  • TWiki Username: Your name in WikiNotation, ex: PeterThoeny, is recorded when you register using TWikiRegistration; doing so also generates a personal home page in the Main web.

TWiki can automatically map an Intranet (Login) Username to a TWiki Username if the {AllowLoginName} is enabled in configure. The default is to use your WikiName as a login name.

NOTE: To correctly enter a WikiName - your own or someone else's - be sure to include the Main web name in front of the Wiki username, followed by a period, and no spaces, for example Main.WikiUsername or %USERSWEB%.WikiUsername. This points WikiUsername to the Main web, where user home pages are located, no matter which web it's entered in. Without the web prefix, the name appears as a NewTopic? everywhere but in the Main web.

Changing Passwords

If your {PasswordManager} supports password changing, you can change and reset passwords using forms on regular pages.

Changing E-mail Addresses

If the active {PasswordManager} supports storage and retrieval of user e-mail addresses, you can change your e-mail using a regular page. As shipped, this is true only for the Apache 'htpasswd' password manager.

Controlling access to individual scripts

You may want to add or remove scripts from the list of scripts that require authentication. The method for doing this is different for each of Template Login and Apache Login.
  • For Template Login, update the {AuthScripts} list using configure
  • For Apache Login, add/remove the script from .htaccess

How to choose an authentication method

One of the key features of TWiki is that it is possible to add HTML to topics. No authentication method is 100% secure on a website where end users can add HTML, as there is always a risk that a malicious user can add code to a topic that gathers user information, such as session IDs. The TWiki developers have been forced to make certain tradeoffs, in the pursuit of efficiency, that may be exploited by a hacker.

This section discusses some of the known risks. You can be sure that any potential hackers have read this section as well!

At one extreme, the most secure method is to use TWiki via SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), with a login manager installed and Client Sessions turned off.

Using TWiki with sessions turned off is a pain, though, as with all the login managers there are occasions where TWiki will forget who you are. The best user experience is achieved with sessions turned on.

As soon as you allow the server to maintain information about a logged-in user, you open a door to potential attacks. There are a variety of ways a malicious user can pervert TWiki to obtain another users session ID, the most common of which is known as a cross-site scripting attack. Once a hacker has an SID they can pretend to be that user.

To help prevent these sorts of attacks, TWiki supports IP matching, which ensures that the IP address of the user requesting a specific session is the same as the IP address of the user who created the session. This works well as long as IP addresses are unique to each client, and as long as the IP address of the client can't be faked.

Session IDs are usually stored by TWiki in cookies, which are stored in the client browser. Cookies work well, but not all environments or users permit cookies to be stored in browsers. So TWiki also supports two other methods of determining the session ID. The first method uses the client IP address to determine the session ID. The second uses a rewriting method that rewrites local URLs in TWiki pages to include the session ID in the URL.

The first method works well as long as IP addresses are unique to each individual client, and client IP addresses can't be faked by a hacker. If IP addresses are unique and can't be faked, it is almost as secure as cookies + IP matching, so it ranks as the fourth most secure method.

If you have to turn IP matching off, and cookies can't be relied on, then you may have to rely on the second method, URL rewriting. This method exposes the session IDs very publicly, so should be regarded as "rather dodgy".

Most TWiki sites don't use SSL, so, as is the case with most sites that don't use SSL, there is always a possibility that a password could be picked out of the aether. Browsers do not encrypt passwords sent over non-SSL links, so using Apache Login is no more secure than Template Login.

Of the two shipped login managers, Apache Login is probably the most useful. It lets you do this sort of thing: wget --http-user=RogerRabbit --http-password=i'mnottelling http://www.example.com/bin/save/Sandbox/StuffAUTOINC0?text=hohoho,%20this%20is%20interesting i.e. pass in a user and password to a request from the command-line. However it doesn't let you log out.

Template Login degrades to url re-writing when you use a client like dillo that does not support cookies. However, you can log out and back in as a different user.

Finally, it would be really neat if someone was to work out how to use certificates to identify users.....

See TWiki:TWiki.SecuringTWikiSite for more information.

TWiki Access Control

Restricting read and write access to topics and webs, by Users and groups

TWiki Access Control allows you restrict access to single topics and entire webs, by individual user and by user Groups. Access control, combined with TWikiUserAuthentication, lets you easily create and manage an extremely flexible, fine-grained privilege system.

TIP Tip: TWiki:TWiki.TWikiAccessControlSupplement on TWiki.org has additional documentation on access control.

An Important Control Consideration

Open, freeform editing is the essence of WikiCulture - what makes TWiki different and often more effective than other collaboration tools. For that reason, it is strongly recommended that decisions to restrict read or write access to a web or a topic are made with great care - the more restrictions, the less Wiki in the mix. Experience shows that unrestricted write access works very well because:

  • Peer influence is enough to ensure that only relevant content is posted.
  • Peer editing - the ability for anyone to rearrange all content on a page - keeps topics focused.
  • In TWiki, content is transparently preserved under revision control:
    • Edits can be undone by the administrator (per default a member of TWikiAdminGroup; see #ManagingGroups).
    • Users are encouraged to edit and refactor (condense a long topic), since there's a safety net.
As a collaboration guideline:
  • Create broad-based Groups (for more and varied input), and...
  • Avoid creating view-only Users (if you can read it, you should be able to contribute to it).

Permissions settings of the webs on this TWiki site

Web Sitemap VIEW CHANGE RENAME
  Listed DENY ALLOW DENY ALLOW DENY ALLOW
Preferences Home Main on            
Preferences Home TWiki on       TWikiAdminGroup   TWikiAdminGroup
Preferences Home DnD on       DnDGroup TWikiAdminGroup   DnDGroup TWikiAdminGroup
Preferences Home Support on            

Please Note:

  • A blank in the the above table may mean either the corresponding control is absent or commented out or that it has been set to a null value. The two conditions have dramatically different and possibly opposed semantics.
  • TWikiGuest is the guest account - used by unauthenticated users.
  • The TWiki web must not deny view to TWikiGuest; otherwise, people will not be able to register.

Note: Above table comes from SitePermissions

Authentication vs. Access Control

Authentication: Identifies who a user is based on a login procedure. See TWikiUserAuthentication.

Access control: Restrict access to content based on users and groups once a user is identified.

Users and Groups

Access control is based on the familiar concept of Users and Groups. Users are defined by their WikiNames. They can then be organized in unlimited combinations by inclusion in one or more user Groups. For convenience, Groups can also be included in other Groups.

Managing Users

A user can create an account in TWikiRegistration. The following actions are performed:

  • WikiName and encrypted password are recorded using the password manager if authentication is enabled.
  • A confirmation e-mail is sent to the user.
  • A user home page with the WikiName of the user is created in the Main web.
  • The user is added to the TWikiUsers topic.

The default visitor name is TWikiGuest. This is the non-authenticated user.

Managing Groups

The following describes the standard TWiki support for groups. Your local TWiki may have an alternate group mapping manager installed. Check with your TWiki administrator if you are in doubt.

Groups are defined by group topics located in the Main web. To create a new group, visit TWikiGroups and enter the name of the new group ending in Group into the "new group" form field. This will create a new group topic with two important settings:

  • Set GROUP = < list of Users and/or Groups >
  • Set ALLOWTOPICCHANGE = < list of Users and/or Groups >

The GROUP setting is a comma-separated list of users and/or other groups. Example:

  • Set GROUP = Main.SomeUser, Main.OtherUser, Main.SomeGroup

The ALLOWTOPICCHANGE setting defines who is allowed to change the group topic; it is a comma delimited list of users and groups. You typically want to restrict that to the members of the group itself, so it should contain the name of the topic. This prevents users not in the group from editing the topic to give themselves or others access. For example, for the KasabianGroup topic write:

  • Set ALLOWTOPICCHANGE = Main.KasabianGroup

ALERT! Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules. Make sure you have three spaces, an asterisk, and an extra space in front of any access control rule.

The Super Admin Group

A number of TWiki functions (for example, renaming webs) are only available to administrators. Administrators are simply users who belong to the SuperAdminGroup. This is a standard user group, the name of which is defined by {SuperAdminGroup} setting in configure. The default name of this group is the TWikiAdminGroup. The system administrator may have chosen a different name for this group if your local TWiki uses an alternate group mapping manager but for simplicity we will use the default name TWikiAdminGroup in the rest of this topic.

You can create new administrators simply by adding them to the TWikiAdminGroup topic. For example,

  • Set GROUP = Main.ElizabethWindsor, Main.TonyBlair
A member of the Super Admin Group has unrestricted access throughout the TWiki, so only trusted staff should be added to this group.

Restricting Access

You can define who is allowed to read or write to a web or a topic. Note that some plugins may not respect access permissions.

  • Restricting VIEW blocks viewing and searching of content. When you restric VIEW to a topic or web, this also restricts INCLUDE and Formatted SEARCH from showing the content of the topics.
  • Restricting CHANGE blocks creating new topics, changing topics or attaching files.
  • Restricting RENAME prevents renaming of topics within a web.

Note that there is an important distinction between CHANGE access and RENAME access. A user can CHANGE a topic, but thanks to version control their changes cannot be lost (the history of the topic before the change is recorded). However if a topic or web is renamed, that history may be lost. Typically a site will only give RENAME access to administrators and content owners.

Controlling access to a Web

You can define restrictions on who is allowed to view a TWiki web. You can restrict access to certain webs to selected Users and Groups, by:

  • authenticating all webs and restricting selected webs: Topic access in all webs is authenticated, and selected webs have restricted access.
  • authenticating and restricting selected webs only: Provide unrestricted viewing access to open webs, with authentication and restriction only on selected webs.

  • You can define these settings in the WebPreferences topic, preferable towards the end of the topic:
    • Set DENYWEBVIEW = < comma-delimited list of Users and Groups >
    • Set ALLOWWEBVIEW = < comma-delimited list of Users and Groups >
    • Set DENYWEBCHANGE = < comma-delimited list of Users and Groups >
    • Set ALLOWWEBCHANGE = < comma-delimited list of Users and Groups >
    • Set DENYWEBRENAME = < comma-delimited list of Users and Groups >
    • Set ALLOWWEBRENAME = < comma-delimited list of Users and Groups >

If your site allows hierarchical webs, then access to sub-webs is determined from the access controls of the parent web, plus the access controls in the sub-web. So, if the parent web has ALLOWWEBVIEW set, this will also apply to the subweb. Also note that you will need to ensure that the parent web's FINALPREFERENCES does not include the access control settings listed above. Otherwise you will not be able override the parent web's access control settings in sub-webs.

Creation and renaming of sub-webs is controlled by the WEBCHANGE setting on the parent web (or ROOTCHANGE for root webs). Renaming is additionally restricted by the setting of WEBRENAME in the web itself.

Note: If you restrict access to the Main, make sure to add the TWikiRegistrationAgent so that users can register. Example:

    • Set ALLOWWEBCHANGE = TWikiAdminGroup, TWikiRegistrationAgent

Note: For Web level access rights Setting any of these settings to an empty value has the same effect as not setting them at all. Please note that the documentation of TWiki 4.0 and earlier versions of TWiki 4.1 did not reflect the actual implementation, e.g. an empty ALLOWWEBVIEW does not prevent anyone from viewing the web, and an an empty DENYWEBVIEW does not allow all to view the web.

Controlling access to a Topic

  • You can define these settings in any topic, preferable towards the end of the topic:
    • Set DENYTOPICVIEW = < comma-delimited list of Users and Groups >
    • Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = < comma-delimited list of Users and Groups >
    • Set DENYTOPICCHANGE = < comma-delimited list of Users and Groups >
    • Set ALLOWTOPICCHANGE = < comma-delimited list of Users and Groups >
    • Set DENYTOPICRENAME = < comma-delimited list of Users and Groups >
    • Set ALLOWTOPICRENAME = < comma-delimited list of Users and Groups >

Remember when opening up access to specific topics within a restricted web that other topics in the web - for example, the WebLeftBar - may also be accessed when viewing the topics. The message you get when you are denied access should tell you what topic you were not permitted to access.

Be careful with empty values for any of these.

  • Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW =
    This means the same as not setting it at all. (This was documented wrong in versions 4.0.X, 4.1.0 and 4.1.1)

  • Set DENYTOPICVIEW =
    Since TWiki 4.0 this means do not deny anyone the right to view this topic. If DENYTOPICVIEW is set to an empty value anyone has access even if ALLOWTOPICVIEW or ALLOWWEBVIEW is defined. This allows to have very restrictive default access rights to an entire web and still allow individual topics to have more open access.

The same rules apply to ALLOWTOPICCHANGE/DENYTOPICCHANGE and APPLYTOPICRENAME/DENYTOPICRENAME. Setting ALLOWTOPICCHANGE or ALLOWTOPICRENAME to en empty value means the same as not defining it. Setting DENYTOPICCHANGE or DENYTOPICRENAME to an empty value means that anyone can edit or rename the topic.

ALERT! The setting to an empty has caused confusion and great debate and it has been decided that the empty setting syntax will be replaced by something which is easier to understand in the 4.2 version of TWiki. A method to upgrade will be provided. Please read the release notes carefully when you upgrade.

See "How TWiki evaluates ALLOW/DENY settings" below for more on how ALLOW and DENY interacts.

Controlling access to Attachments

Attachments are referred to directly, and are not normally indirected via TWiki scripts. This means that the above instructions for access control will not apply to attachments. It is possible that someone may inadvertently publicise a URL that they expected to be access-controlled.

The easiest way to apply the same access control rules for attachments as apply to topics is to use the Apache mod_rewrite module, and configure your webserver to redirect accesses to attachments to the TWiki viewfile script. For example, 

    ScriptAlias /twiki/bin/ /filesystem/path/to/twiki/bin/
    Alias /twiki/pub/       /filesystem/path/to/twiki/pub/

    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/+twiki/+pub/+TWiki/+.+
    RewriteRule ^/+twiki/+pub/+([^/]+)/+((([^/]+)/+)+)(.+) /twiki/bin/viewfile/$1/$4?filename=$5 [L,PT]

That way all the controls that apply to the topic also apply to attachments to the topic. Other types of webserver have similar support.

Note: Images embedded in topics will load much slower since each image will be delivered by the viewfile script.

Controlling who can manage top-level webs

Top level webs are a special case, because they don't have a parent web with a WebPreferences. So there has to be a special control just for the root level.

  • You can define these settings in the Main.%TWIKIPREFSTOPIC% topic, preferable towards the end of the topic:
    • Set DENYROOTCHANGE = < comma-delimited list of Users and Groups >
    • Set ALLOWROOTCHANGE = < comma-delimited list of Users and Groups >
Note that you do not require ROOTCHANGE access to rename an existing top-level web. You just need WEBCHANGE in the web itself.

How TWiki evaluates ALLOW/DENY settings

When deciding whether to grant access, TWiki evaluates the following rules in order (read from the top of the list; if the logic arrives at PERMITTED or DENIED that applies immediately and no more rules are applied). You need to read the rules bearing in mind that VIEW, CHANGE and RENAME access may be granted/denied separately.

  1. If the user is an administrator
    • access is PERMITTED.
  2. If DENYTOPIC is set to a list of wikinames
    • people in the list will be DENIED.
  3. If DENYTOPIC is set to empty ( i.e. Set DENYTOPIC = )
    • access is PERMITTED i.e no-one is denied access to this topic.
      ALERT! Attention: Use this with caution. This is deprecated and will likely change in the next release.
  4. If ALLOWTOPIC is set
    1. people in the list are PERMITTED
    2. everyone else is DENIED
  5. If DENYWEB is set to a list of wikinames
    • people in the list are DENIED access
  6. If ALLOWWEB is set to a list of wikinames
    • people in the list will be PERMITTED
    • everyone else will be DENIED
  7. If you got this far, access is PERMITTED

Access Control quick recipes

Obfuscating Webs

Another way of hiding webs is to keep them hidden by not publishing the URL and by preventing the all webs search option from accessing obfuscated webs. Do so by enabling the NOSEARCHALL variable in WebPreferences:

  • Set NOSEARCHALL = on

This setup can be useful to hide a new web until content its ready for deployment, or to hide view access restricted webs.

ALERT! Note: Obfuscating a web without view access control is very insecure, as anyone who knows the URL can access the web.

Restrict Access to Whole TWiki Site

For a firewalled TWiki, e.g. an intranet wiki or extranet wiki, you want to allow only invited people to access your TWiki. In this case, enable user authentication with ApacheLogin and lock down access to the whole twiki/bin and twiki/pub directories to all but valid users. In the Apache .htaccess file or the appropriate .conf file, replace the <FilesMatch "(attach|edit|... section with this: 

<FilesMatch ".*">
       require valid-user
</FilesMatch>

If needed, you can further restrict access to selected webs with ALLOWWEBVIEW and other access control settings.

Note: With this configuration, someone with access to the site needs to register new users.

Authenticate all Webs and Restrict Selected Webs

Use the following setup to authenticate users for topic viewing in all webs and to restrict access to selected webs. Requires TWikiUserAuthentication to be enabled.

  1. Set require valid-user on your view script in .htaccess or the appropriate Apache .conf file. As of 4.x, this looks like: FilesMatch "(attach|edit|manage|rename|save|view|upload|mail|logon|.*auth).*" (normally view is not in that list).
  2. Restrict view access to selected Users and Groups. Set one or both of these variables in its WebPreferences topic:
    • Set DENYWEBVIEW = < list of Users and Groups >
    • Set ALLOWWEBVIEW = < list of Users and Groups >
    • Note: DENYWEBVIEW is evaluated before ALLOWWEBVIEW. Access is denied if the authenticated person is in the DENYWEBVIEW list, or not in the ALLOWWEBVIEW list. Access is granted if DENYWEBVIEW and ALLOWWEBVIEW are not defined.
  3. If you still want public users to be able to register automatically follow TWiki:TWiki.RegisterOnViewRestrictedSite.

Authenticate and Restrict Selected Webs Only

Use the following setup to provide unrestricted viewing access to open webs, with authentication only on selected webs. Requires TWikiUserAuthentication to be enabled.

  1. Restrict view access to selected Users and Groups. Set one or both of these variables in its WebPreferences topic:
    • Set DENYWEBVIEW = < list of Users and Groups >
    • Set ALLOWWEBVIEW = < list of Users and Groups >
    • Note: DENYWEBVIEW is evaluated before ALLOWWEBVIEW. Access is denied if the authenticated person is in the DENYWEBVIEW list, or not in the ALLOWWEBVIEW list. Access is granted if DENYWEBVIEW and ALLOWWEBVIEW are not defined.

Hide Control Settings

TIP Tip: To hide access control settings from normal browser viewing, you can put them into the topic-local settings. You can access those settings via the "More" screen, as explained in TWikiVariables.

Alternatively, place them in HTML comment markers, but this exposes the access setting during ordinary editing.

<!--
   * Set DENYTOPICCHANGE = Main.SomeGroup
-->

Warning: Can't find topic TWiki/.TWikiTemplatingSystem

TWiki Skins

Skins overlay regular templates to give different looks and feels to TWiki screens.

Overview

TWiki uses TWikiTemplates files as the basis of all the screens it uses to interact with users. Each screen has an associated template file that contains the basic layout of the screen. This is then filled in by the code to generate what you see in the browser.

TWiki ships with a default set of template files that give a very basic, CSS-themable, look-and-feel. TWiki also includes support for skins that can be selected to give different, more sophisticated, look and feels. A default TWiki installation will usually start up with the PatternSkin already selected. Skins may also be defined by third parties and loaded into a TWiki installation to give more options. To see how TWiki looks when no skin is selected, view this topic with a non-existant skin.

Topic text is not affected by the choice of skin, though a skin can be defined to use a CSS (Cascading Style Sheet), which can sometimes give a radically different appearance to the text.

Relevant links on TWiki.org:

See other types of extensions: TWikiAddOns, TWikiContribs, TWikiPlugins

Changing the default TWiki skin

TWiki default ships with the skin PatternSkin activated. You can set the skin for the whole site, a single web or topic, or for each user individually, by setting the SKIN variable to the name of a skin. If the skin you select doesn't exist, then TWiki will pick up the default templates.

Defining Skins

You may want to define your own skin, for example to comply with corporate web guidelines, or because you have a aesthetic vision that you want to share. There are a couple of places you an start doing this.

The TWikiTemplates files used for skins are located in the twiki/templates directory and are named according to the skin: <scriptname>.<skin>.tmpl. Skin files may also be defined in TWiki topics - see TWikiTemplates for details.

To start creating a new skin, copy the default TWikiTemplates (like view.tmpl), or copy an existing skin to use as a base for your own skin. You should only need to copy the files you intend to customise, as TWiki can be configured to fall back to another skin if a template is not defined in your skin. Name the files as described above (for example view.myskin.tmpl.

If you use PatternSkin as your starting point, and you want to modify the layout, colors or even the templates to suit your own needs, have a look first at the topics PatternSkinCustomization and PatternSkinCssCookbook.

For your own TWiki skin you are encouraged to show a small 80x31 pixel This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform logo at the bottom of your skin:

<a href="http://twiki.org/"><img src="%PUBURL%/%SYSTEMWEB%/TWikiLogos/T-logo-80x15.gif" alt="This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform" width="80" height="15" title="This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform" border="0" /></a>

The standard TWiki skins show the logo in the %WEBCOPYRIGHT% variable.

ALERT! Note: Two skin names have reserved meanings; text skin, and skin names starting with rss have hard-coded meanings.

The following template files are used for TWiki screens, and are referenced in the TWiki core code. If a skin doesn't define its own version of a template file, then TWiki will fall back to the next skin in the skin path, or finally, to the default version of the template file.

(Certain template files are expected to provide certain TMPL:DEFs - these are listed in sub-bullets)

  • addform - used to select a new form for a topic
  • attachagain - used when refreshing an existing attachment
  • attachnew - used when attaching a new file to a topic
  • attachtables - defines the format of attachments at the bottom of the standard topic view
    • ATTACH:files:footer, ATTACH:files:header, ATTACH:files:row, ATTACH:versions:footer, ATTACH:versions:header, ATTACH:versions:row
  • changeform - used to change the form in a topic
  • changes - used by the changes script
  • edit - used for the edit screen
  • form
  • formtables - used to defined the format of forms
    • FORM:display:footer, FORM:display:header, FORM:display:row
  • login - used for loggin in when using the TemplateLoginManager
    • LOG_IN, LOG_IN_BANNER, LOG_OUT, LOGGED_IN_BANNER, NEW_USER_NOTE, UNRECOGNISED_USER
  • moveattachment - used when moving an attachment
  • oopsaccessdenied - used to format Access Denied messages
    • no_such_topic, no_such_web, only_group, topic_access
  • oopsattention - used to format Attention messages
    • already_exists, bad_email, bad_ver_code, bad_wikiname, base_web_missing, confirm, created_web, delete_err, invalid_web_color, invalid_web_name, in_a_group, mandatory_field, merge_notice, missing_action, missing_fields, move_err, missing_action, no_form_def, no_users_to_reset, notwikiuser, oversized_upload, password_changed, password_mismatch, problem_adding, remove_user_done, rename_err, rename_not_wikiword, rename_topic_exists, rename_web_err, rename_web_exists, rename_web_prerequisites, reset_bad, reset_ok, save_error, send_mail_error, thanks, topic_exists, unrecognized_action, upload_name_changed, web_creation_error, web_exists, web_missing, wrong_password, zero_size_upload
  • oopschangelanguage - used to prompt for a new language when internationalisation is enabled
  • oopsgeneric - a basic dialog for user information; provides "ok" button only
  • oopslanguagechanged - used to confirm a new language when internationalisation is enabled
  • oopsleaseconflict - used to format lease Conflict messages
    • lease_active, lease_old
  • preview - used for previewing edited topics before saving
  • rdiff - used for viewing topic differences
  • registernotify - used by the user registration system
  • registernotifyadmin - used by the user registration system
  • rename - used when renaming a topic
  • renameconfirm - used when renaming a topic
  • renamedelete - used when renaming a topic
  • renameweb - used when renaming a web
  • renamewebconfirm - used when renaming a web
  • renamewebdelete - used when renaming a web
  • searchbookview - used to format inline search results in book view
  • searchformat - used to format inline search results
  • search - used by the search CGI script
  • settings
  • view - used by the view CGI script
  • viewprint - used to create the printable view

twiki.tmpl is a master template conventionally used by other templates, but not used directly by code.

ALERT! Note: It is best to create these templates for your skin. If you TMPL:INCLUDE the default templates, or templates from other skins, when you are defining your own skin, you run the risk that the included file might change and break your skin.

Partial customisation, or adding in new features to an existing skin

You can use recusion in the TMPL:INCLUDE chain (eg twiki.classic.tmpl contains %TMPL:INCLUDE{"twiki"}%, the templating system will include the next twiki.SKIN in the skin path. For example, to create a customisation of pattern skin, where you only want to remove the edit & WYSIWYG buttons from view page, you create only a view.yourlocal.tmpl: 

%TMPL:INCLUDE{"view"}%
%TMPL:DEF{"edit_topic_link"}%%TMPL:END%
%TMPL:DEF{"edit_wysiwyg_link"}%%TMPL:END%
and then set SKIN=yourlocal,pattern.

Because ClassicSkin and the default templates use the same Template definition names, you can over-ride the edit links in them (or any skin derived from them) using the same view.yourlocal.tmpl (just set SKIN=yourlocal,classic either in TWikiPreferences for globally, or a Web's Webname.WebPreferences for a particular web)

Variables in Skins

You can use template variables, TWikiVariables, and other predefined variables to compose your skins. Some commonly used variables in skins:

Variable: Expanded to:
%WEBLOGONAME% Filename of web logo
%WEBLOGOIMG% Image URL of web logo
%WEBLOGOURL% Link of web logo
%WEBLOGOALT% Alt text of web logo
%WIKILOGOURL% Link of page logo
%WIKILOGOIMG% Image URL of page logo
%WIKILOGOALT% Alt text of page logo
%WEBBGCOLOR% Web-specific background color, defined in the WebPreferences
%WIKITOOLNAME% The name of your TWiki site
%SCRIPTURL% The script URL of TWiki
%SCRIPTURLPATH% The script URL path
%SCRIPTSUFFIX% The script suffix, ex: .pl, .cgi
%WEB% The name of the current web.
%TOPIC% The name of the current topic.
%WEBTOPICLIST% Common links of current web, defined in the WebPreferences. It includes a Go box
%TEXT% The topic text, e.g. the content that can be edited
%META{"form"}% TWikiForm, if any
%META{"attachments"}% FileAttachment table
%META{"parent"}% The topic parent
%EDITTOPIC% Edit link
%REVTITLE% The revision title, if any, ex: (r1.6)
%REVINFO% Revision info, ex: r1.6 - 24 Dec 2002 - 08:12 GMT - TWikiGuest
%WEBCOPYRIGHT% Copyright notice, defined in the WebPreferences
%BROADCASTMESSAGE% Broadcast message at the beginning of your view template, can be used to alert users of scheduled downtimes; can be set in TWikiPreferences

The "Go" Box and Navigation Box

The default skins include a "Go" box, also called "Jump" box, to jump to a topic.

The box also understands URLs, e.g. you can type http://www.google.com/ to jump to an external web site. The feature is handy if you build a skin that has a select box of frequently used links, like Intranet home, employee database, sales database and such. A little JavaScript gets into action on the onchange method of the select tag to fill the selected URL into the "Go" box field, then submits the form.

Here is an example form that has a select box and the "Go" box for illustration purposes. You need to have JavaScript enabled for this to work:

Bare bones header, for demo only
Navigate:
Jump:

Note: Redirect to a URL only works if it is enabled in configure (Miscellaneous, {AllowRedirectUrl}).

Using Cascading Style Sheets

CSS files are gererally attachments to the skin topic that are included in the the skin templates - in the case of PatternSkin in the template styles.pattern.tmpl.

  • To see how CSS is used in the default TWiki skin, see: PatternSkin
  • If you write a complete new skin, this is the syntax to use in a template file: 
<style type='text/css' media='all'>@import url('%PUBURLPATH%/%SYSTEMWEB%/MySkin/mystyle.css');</style>

Attachment Tables

Controlling the look and feel of attachment tables is a little bit more complex than for the rest of a skin. By default, the attachment table is a standard TWiki table, and the look is controlled in the same way as other tables. In a very few cases you may want to change the content of the table as well.

The format of standard attachment tables is defined through the use of special TWiki template macros which by default, are defined in the attachtables.tmpl template using the %TMPL:DEF macro syntax described in TWikiTemplates. These macros are:

Macro Description
ATTACH:files:header Standard title bar
ATTACH:files:row Standard row
ATTACH:files:footer Footer for all screens
ATTACH:files:header:A Title bar for upload screens, with attributes column
ATTACH:files:row:A Row for upload screen
ATTACH:files:footer:A Footer for all screens

The format of tables of file versions in the Upload screen can also be changed, using the macros:

Macro Description
ATTACH:versions:header Header for versions table on upload screen
ATTACH:versions:row Row format for versions table on upload screen
ATTACH:versions:footer Footer for versions table on upload screen

The ATTACH:row macros are expanded for each file in the attachment table, using the following special tags:

Tag Description
%A_URL% viewfile URL that will recover the file
%A_REV% Revision of this file
%A_ICON% A file icon suitable for representing the attachment content
%A_FILE% The name of the file. To get the 'pub' url of the file, use %PUBURL%/%WEB%/%TOPIC%/%A_FILE%
%A_SIZE% The size of the file
%A_DATE% The date the file was uploaded
%A_USER% The user who uploaded it
%A_COMMENT% The comment they put in when uploading it
%A_ATTRS% The attributes of the file as seen on the upload screen e.g "h" for a hidden file

Packaging and Publishing Skins

See TWiki:Plugins/SkinPackagingHowTo and TWiki:Plugins/SkinDeveloperFAQ

Browsing Installed Skins

You can try out all installed skins in the TWikiSkinBrowser.

Activating Skins

TWiki uses a skin search path, which lets you combine skins additively. The skin path is defined using a combination of TWikiVariables and URL parameters.

TWiki works by asking for a template for a particular function - for example, 'view'. The detail of how templates are searched for is described in TWikiTemplates, but in summary, the templates directory is searched for a file called view.skin.tmpl, where skin is the name of the skin e.g. pattern. If no template is found, then the fallback is to use view.tmpl. Each skin on the path is searched for in turn. For example, if you have set the skin path to local,pattern then view.local.tmpl will be searched for first, then view.pattern.tmpl and finally view.tmpl.

The basic skin is defined by a SKIN setting:

  • Set SKIN = catskin, bearskin

You can also add a parameter to the URL, such as ?skin=catskin,bearskin:

Setting SKIN (or the ?skin parameter in the URL) replaces the existing skin path setting, for the current page only. You can also extend the existing skin path as well, using covers.

  • Set COVER = ruskin

This pushes a different skin to the front of the skin search path (so for our example above, that final skin path will be ruskin, catskin, bearskin). There is also an equivalent cover URL parameter. The difference between setting SKIN vs. COVER is that if the chosen template is not found (e.g., for included templates), SKIN will fall back onto the next skin in line, or the default skin, if only one skin was present, while COVER will always fall back onto the current skin.

An example would be invoking the printable mode, which is achieved by applying ?cover=print. The view.print.tmpl simply invokes the viewprint template for the current skin which then can appropriately include all other used templates for the current skin. Where the printable mode be applied by using SKIN, all skins would have the same printable appearance.

The full skin path is built up as follows: SKIN setting (or ?skin if it is set), then COVER setting is added, then ?cover.

Hard-Coded Skins

The text skin is reserved for TWiki internal use.

Skin names starting with rss also have a special meaning; if one or more of the skins in the skin path starts with 'rss' then 8-bit characters will be encoded as XML entities in the output, and the content-type header will be forced to text/xml.

Related Topics: TWikiSkinBrowser, AdminDocumentationCategory, DeveloperDocumentationCategory, TWiki:TWiki.TWikiSkinsSupplement

-- Contributors: TWiki:Main.PeterThoeny, TWiki:Main.MikeMannix, TWiki:Main.CrawfordCurrie

TWiki Variables

Special text strings expand on the fly to display user data or system info

TWikiVariables are text strings - %VARIABLE% or %VARIABLE{ parameter="value" }% - that expand into content whenever a topic is rendered for viewing. There are two types of variables:

  1. Preferences variables: Can be defined and changed by the user
  2. Predefined variables: Defined by the TWiki system or by Plugins (for example, the SpreadSheetPlugin introduces a %CALC{}% variable)

Using Variables

To use a variable type its name. For example,

  • type %T% to get TIP (a preferences variable)
  • type %TOPIC% to get TWikiVariables (a predefined variable)
  • type %CALC{ "$UPPER(Text)" }% to get TEXT (a variable defined by Plugin)

Note:

  • To leave a variable unexpanded, precede it with an exclamation point, e.g. type !%TOPIC% to get %TOPIC%
  • Variables are expanded relative to the topic they are used in, not the topic they are defined in
  • Type %ALLVARIABLES% to get a full listing of all variables defined for a particular topic

Variable Names

Variable names must start with a letter. The following characters can be letters, numbers and the underscore '_'. You can use both upper-case and lower-case letters and you can mix the characteres. E.g. %MYVAR%, %MyVar%, %My2ndVar%, and %My_Var% are all valid variable names. Variables are case sensitive. %MyVAR% and %MYVAR% are not the same variable.

By convention all settings, predefined variables and variables used by plugins are always UPPER-CASE.

Preferences Variables

Unlike predefined variables, preferences variables can be defined by the user in various places.

Setting Preferences Variables

You can set variables in all the following places:
  1. local site level in TWiki.TWikiPreferences
  2. plugin topics (see TWikiPlugins)
  3. local site level in Main.TWikiPreferences
  4. user level in individual user topics in Main web
  5. web level in WebPreferences of each web
  6. topic level in topics in webs
  7. session variables (if sessions are enabled)

Settings at higher-numbered levels override settings of the same variable at lower numbered levels, unless the variable was included in the setting of FINALPREFERENCES at a lower-numbered level, in which case it is locked at the value it has at that level.

If you are setting a variable and using it in the same topic, note that TWiki reads all the variable settings from the saved version of the topic before it displays anything. This means you can use a variable anywhere in the topic, even if you set it somewhere inconspicuous near the end. But beware: it also means that if you change the setting of a variable you are using in the same topic, Preview will show the wrong thing, and you must Save the topic to see it correctly.

The syntax for setting Variables is the same anywhere in TWiki (on its own TWiki bullet line, including nested bullets):
[multiple of 3 spaces] * [space] Set [space] VARIABLENAME [space] = [space] value

Examples:
  • Set VARIABLENAME = value
    • Set VARIABLENAME = value
Spaces between the = sign and the value will be ignored. You can split a value over several lines by indenting following lines with spaces - as long as you don't try to use * as the first character on the following line.
Example: 
   * Set VARIABLENAME = value starts here
     and continues here

Whatever you include in your Variable will be expanded on display, exactly as if it had been entered directly.

Example: Create a custom logo variable
  • To place a logo anywhere in a web by typing %MYLOGO%, define the Variable on the web's WebPreferences topic, and upload a logo file, ex: mylogo.gif. You can upload by attaching the file to WebPreferences, or, to avoid clutter, to any other topic in the same web, e.g. LogoTopic. Sample variable setting in WebPreferences:
    • Set MYLOGO = %PUBURL%/%WEB%/LogoTopic/mylogo.gif

You can also set preferences variables on a topic by clicking the link Edit topic preference settings under More topic actions. Preferences set in this manner are not visible in the topic text, but take effect nevertheless.

Access Control Variables

These are special types of preferences variables to control access to content. TWikiAccessControl explains these security settings in detail.

Local values for variables

Certain topics (a users home topic, web site and default preferences topics) have a problem; variables defined in those topics can have two meanings. For example, consider a user topic. A user may want to use a double-height edit box when they are editing their home topic - but only when editing their home topic. The rest of the time, they want to have a normal edit box. This separation is achieved using Local in place of Set in the variable definition. For example, if the user sets the following in their home topic: 
   * Set EDITBOXHEIGHT = 10
   * Local EDITBOXHEIGHT = 20
Then when they are editing any other topic, they will get a 10 high edit box. However when they are editing their home topic, they will get a 20 high edit box. Local can be used wherever a preference needs to take a different value depending on where the current operation is being performed.

Use this powerful feature with great care! %ALLVARIABLES% can be used to get a listing of the values of all variables in their evaluation order, so you can see variable scope if you get confused.

Frequently Used Preferences Variables

The following preferences variables are frequently used. They are defined in TWikiPreferences#Miscellaneous_Settings:

  • %BR% - line break
  • %BULLET% - bullet sign
  • %BB% - line break and bullet combined
  • %BB2% - indented line break and bullet
  • %RED% text %ENDCOLOR% - colored text (also %YELLOW%, %ORANGE%, %PINK%, %PURPLE%, %TEAL%, %NAVY%, %BLUE%, %AQUA%, %LIME%, %GREEN%, %OLIVE%, %MAROON%, %BROWN%, %BLACK%, %GRAY%, %SILVER%, %WHITE%)
  • %H% - HELP Help icon
  • %I% - IDEA! Idea icon
  • %M% - MOVED TO... Moved to icon
  • %N% - NEW New icon
  • %P% - REFACTOR Refactor icon
  • %Q% - QUESTION? Question icon
  • %S% - PICK Pick icon
  • %T% - TIP Tip icon
  • %U% - UPDATED Updated icon
  • %X% - ALERT! Alert icon
  • %Y% - DONE Done icon

There are additional useful preferences variables defined in TWikiPreferences, in Main.TWikiPreferences, and in WebPreferences of every web.

Predefined Variables

Most predefined variables return values that were either set in the configuration when TWiki was installed, or taken from server info (such as current username, or date and time). Some, like %SEARCH%, are powerful and general tools.

  • ALERT! Predefined variables can be overridden by preferences variables
  • ALERT! Plugins may extend the set of predefined variables (see individual Plugins topics for details)
  • TIP Take the time to thoroughly read through ALL preference variables. If you actively configure your site, review variables periodically. They cover a wide range of functions, and it can be easy to miss the one perfect variable for something you have in mind. For example, see %INCLUDINGTOPIC%, %INCLUDE%, and the mighty %SEARCH%.

This version of TWiki - TWiki-4.2.0, Tue, 22 Jan 2008, build 16278 - predefines the following variables:

ACTIVATEDPLUGINS -- list of currently activated plugins

ALLVARIABLES -- list of currently defined TWikiVariables

  • Syntax: %ALLVARIABLES%
  • Expands to: a table showing all defined TWikiVariables in the current context

AQUA -- start aqua colored text

  • AQUA is one of the rendering shortcut settings predefined in TWikiPreferences. See the section rendering shortcut settings in that topic for a complete list of colors.
  • Syntax: %AQUA% aqua text %ENDCOLOR%
  • Expands to: aqua text
  • Note: %<color>% text must end with %ENDCOLOR%. If you want to switch from one color to another one you first need to end the active color with %ENDCOLOR%, e.g. write %RED% some text %ENDCOLOR% %GREEN% more text %ENDCOLOR%.
  • Related: ENDCOLOR, TWikiPreferences, StandardColors

ATTACHURL -- full URL for attachments in the current topic

ATTACHURLPATH -- path of the attachment URL of the current topic

AUTHREALM -- authentication realm

BASETOPIC -- base topic where an INCLUDE started

  • The name of the topic where a single or nested INCLUDE started - same as %TOPIC% if there is no INCLUDE
  • Syntax: %BASETOPIC%
  • Related: BASEWEB, INCLUDINGTOPIC, INCLUDE, TOPIC

BASEWEB -- base web where an INCLUDE started

  • The web name where the includes started, e.g. the web of the first topic of nested includes. Same as %WEB% in case there is no include.
  • Syntax: %BASEWEB%
  • Related: BASETOPIC, INCLUDINGWEB, INCLUDE, WEB

BB -- bullet with line break

BB2 -- level 2 bullet with line break

BB3 -- level 3 bullet with line break

BB4 -- level 4 bullet with line break

BLACK -- start black colored text

  • BLACK is one of the rendering shortcut settings predefined in TWikiPreferences. See the section rendering shortcut settings in that topic for a complete list of colors.
  • Syntax: %BLACK% black text %ENDCOLOR%
  • Expands to: black text
  • Note: %<color>% text must end with %ENDCOLOR%. If you want to switch from one color to another one you first need to end the active color with %ENDCOLOR%, e.g. write %RED% some text %ENDCOLOR% %GREEN% more text %ENDCOLOR%.
  • Related: ENDCOLOR, TWikiPreferences, StandardColors

BLUE -- start blue colored text

  • BLUE is one of the rendering shortcut settings predefined in TWikiPreferences. See the section rendering shortcut settings in that topic for a complete list of colors.
  • Syntax: %BLUE% blue text %ENDCOLOR%
  • Expands to: blue text
  • Note: %<color>% text must end with %ENDCOLOR%. If you want to switch from one color to another one you first need to end the active color with %ENDCOLOR%, e.g. write %RED% some text %ENDCOLOR% %GREEN% more text %ENDCOLOR%.
  • Related: ENDCOLOR, TWikiPreferences, StandardColors

BR -- line break

BROWN -- start brown colored text

  • BROWN is one of the rendering shortcut settings predefined in TWikiPreferences. See the section rendering shortcut settings in that topic for a complete list of colors.
  • Syntax: %BROWN% brown text %ENDCOLOR%
  • Expands to: brown text
  • Note: %<color>% text must end with %ENDCOLOR%. If you want to switch from one color to another one you first need to end the active color with %ENDCOLOR%, e.g. write %RED% some text %ENDCOLOR% %GREEN% more text %ENDCOLOR%.
  • Related: ENDCOLOR, TWikiPreferences, StandardColors

BULLET -- bullet character

CALC{"formula"} -- add spreadsheet calculations to tables and outside tables

  • The %CALC{"formula"}% variable is handled by the SpreadSheetPlugin. There are around 80 formulae, such as $ABS(), $EXACT(), $EXISTS(), $GET()/$SET(), $IF(), $LOG(), $LOWER(), $PERCENTILE(), $TIME(), $VALUE().
  • Syntax: %CALC{"formula"}%
  • Examples:
    • %CALC{"$SUM($ABOVE())"}% returns the sum of all cells above the current cell
    • %CALC{"$EXISTS(Web.SomeTopic)"}% returns 1 if the topic exists
    • %CALC{"$UPPER(Collaboration)"}% returns COLLABORATION
  • Related: IF, SpreadSheetPlugin

CARET -- caret symbol

CODE{"language"} -- format and syntax highlight code fragments

  • Syntax: %CODE{"language"}%
    • where language is one of bash, c++, c#, java, javascript, lua, makefile, perl, plsql, php3, phython, scheme, tcl, html, xml, verilog, vhdl
  • Related: BeautifierPlugin

COMMENT{ attributes } -- insert an edit box into the topic to easily add comments.

  • A %COMMENT% without parameters shows a simple text box.
  • The following standard attributes are recognized
    Name Description Default
    type This is the name of the template to use for this comment. Comment templates are defined in a TWiki template - see Customisation, below. If this attribute is not defined, the type is whatever is defined by COMMENTPLUGIN_DEFAULT_TYPE, either in this topic or in your WebPreferences. below
    default Default text to put into the textarea of the prompt.  
    target Name of the topic to add the comment to the current topic
    location Regular expression specifying the comment location in the target topic. Read carefully the CommentPlugin documentation!  
    mode For compatibility with older versions only, synonymous with type  
    nonotify Set to "on" to disable change notification for target topics off
    noform Set to "on" to disable the automatic form that encloses your comment block - remember to insert <form> tags yourself! See CommentPluginExamples#noform for an example. off
    nopost Set to "on" to disable insertion of the posted text into the topic. off
    remove Set to "on" to remove the comment prompt after the first time it is clicked. off
    button Button label text Add comment

DATE -- signature format date

DISPLAYTIME -- display time

DISPLAYTIME{"format"} -- formatted display time

  • Formatted time - either GMT or Local server time, depending on setting in configure. Same format qualifiers as %GMTIME%
  • Syntax: %DISPLAYTIME{"format"}%
  • Example: %DISPLAYTIME{"$hou:$min"}% expands to 20:23
  • Related: DISPLAYTIME, GMTIME, SERVERTIME

EDITTABLE{ attributes } -- edit TWiki tables using edit fields and other input fields

  • The %EDITTABLE{}% variable is handled by the EditTablePlugin
  • Syntax: %EDITTABLE{ attributes }%

  • Supported attributes:
    Attribute Comment Default
    header Specify the header format of a new table like "|*Food*|*Drink*|". Useful to start a table with only a button (no header)
    format The format of one column when editing the table. A cell can be a text input field, or any of these edit field types:

    • Text input field (1 line):
      | text, <size>, <initial value> |

    • Textarea input field:
      | textarea, <rows>x<columns>, <initial value> |

    • Drop down box:
      | select, <size>, <option 1>, <option 2>, etc* |
      * only one item can be selected

    • Radio buttons:
      | radio, <size*>, <option 1>, <option 2>, etc |
      * size indicates the number of buttons per line in edit mode

    • Checkboxes:
      | checkbox, <size*>, <option 1>, <option 2>, etc |
      * size indicates the number of checkboxes per line in edit mode

    • Fixed label:
      | label, 0, <label text> |

    • Row number:
      | row, <offset> |

    • Date:
      | date, <size>, <initial value>, <DHTML date format> | (see Date Field Type)     		"text, 16"
    for all cells
    changerows Rows can be added and removed if "on"
    Rows can be added but not removed if "add"
    Rows cannot be added or removed if "off"     		CHANGEROWS
    Plugin setting
    quietsave Quiet Save button is shown if "on", hidden if "off" QUIETSAVE
    Plugin setting
    include Other topic defining the EDITTABLE parameters. The first %EDITTABLE% in the topic is used. This is useful if you have many topics with the same table format and you want to update the format in one place. (none)
    helptopic Topic name containing help text shown below the table when editing a table. The %STARTINCLUDE% and %STOPINCLUDE% variables can be used in the topic to specify what is shown. (no help text)
    headerislabel Table header cells are read-only (labels) if "on"; header cells can be edited if "off" or "0" "on"
    editbutton Set edit button text, e.g. "Edit this table"; set button image with alt text, e.g. "Edit table, %PUBURL%/%TWIKIWEB%/TWikiDocGraphics/edittopic.gif"; hide edit button at the end of the table with "hide" (Note: Button is automatically hidden if an edit button is present in a cell) EDITBUTTON
    Plugin setting

  • Example:
    %EDITTABLE{ format="| text, 20 | select, 1, one, two, three |" changerows="on" }%
    | *Name* | *Type* |
    | Foo | two |
  • Related: See EditTablePlugin for more details

ENCODE{"string"} -- encodes a string to HTML entities

  • Encode "special" characters to HTML numeric entities. Encoded characters are:
    • all non-printable ASCII characters below space, except newline ("\n") and linefeed ("\r")
    • HTML special characters "<", ">", "&", single quote (') and double quote (")
    • TWiki special characters "%", "[", "]", "@", "_", "*", "=" and "|"
  • Syntax: %ENCODE{"string"}%
  • Supported parameters:
    Parameter: Description: Default:
    "string" String to encode required (can be empty)
    type="entity" Encode special characters into HTML entities, like a double quote into &#034;. Does not encode \n or \r. type="url"
    type="html" As type="entity" except it also encodes \n and \r type="url"
    type="quotes" Escape double quotes with backslashes (\"), does not change other characters type="url"
    type="url" Encode special characters for URL parameter use, like a double quote into %22 (this is the default)
  • Example: %ENCODE{"spaced name"}% expands to spaced%20name
  • ALERT! Note: Values of HTML input fields must be entity encoded.
    Example: <input type="text" name="address" value="%ENCODE{ "any text" type="entity" }%" />
  • ALERT! Note: Double quotes in strings must be escaped when passed into other TWiki variables.
    Example: %SEARCH{ "%ENCODE{ "string with "quotes"" type="quotes" }%" noheader="on" }%

ENDCOLOR -- end colored text

ENDSECTION{"name"} -- marks the end of a named section within a topic

  • Syntax: %ENDSECTION{"name"}%
  • Syntax: %ENDSECTION{type="include"}%
  • Supported parameter:
    Parameter: Description:
    "name" Name of the section.
    type="..." Type of the section being terminated; supported types "section", "include", "templateonly".
  • If the STARTSECTION is named, the corresponding ENDSECTION must also be named with the same name. If the STARTSECTION specifies a type, then the corresponding ENDSECTION must also specify the same type. If the section is unnamed, ENDSECTION will match with the nearest unnamed %STARTSECTION% of the same type above it.
  • Related: STARTSECTION

ENV{"varname"} -- inspect the value of an environment variable

  • Returns the current value of the environment variable in the CGI (Common Gateway Interface) environment. This is the environment that the TWiki scripts run in on the web server.
  • Note: For security reasons, only those variables whose names match the regular expression in {AccessibleENV} in the Security Settings/Miscellaneous section of configure can be displayed. Any other variable will just be shown as an empty string, irrespective of its real value.
  • Example: %ENV{MOD_PERL}% displays as: not set
  • If a variable is undefined (as against being set to the empty string) it will be returned as not set.
  • Related: HTTP_HOST, REMOTE_ADDR, REMOTE_PORT, REMOTE_USER

FAILEDPLUGINS -- debugging for plugins that failed to load, and handler list

FORMFIELD{"fieldname"} -- renders a field in the form attached to some topic

  • Syntax: %FORMFIELD{"fieldname"}%
  • Supported parameters:
    Parameter: Description: Default:
    "fieldname" The name of a TWiki form field required
    topic="..." Topic where form data is located. May be of the form Web.TopicName Current topic
    format="..." Format string. $value expands to the field value, and $title expands to the fieldname "$value"
    default="..." Text shown when no value is defined for the field ""
    alttext="..." Text shown when field is not found in the form ""
  • Example: %FORMFIELD{"ProjectName" topic="Projects.SushiProject" default="(not set)" alttext="ProjectName field found"}%
  • Related: SEARCH

GMTIME -- GM time

GMTIME{"format"} -- formatted GM time

  • Syntax: %GMTIME{"format"}%
  • Supported variables:
    Variable: Unit: Example
    $seconds seconds 59
    $minutes minutes 59
    $hours hours 23
    $day day of month 31
    $wday day of the Week (Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat) Thu
    $dow day of the week (Sun = 0) 2
    $week number of week in year (ISO 8601) 34
    $month short name of month Dec
    $mo 2 digit month 12
    $year 4 digit year 1999
    $ye 2 digit year 99
    $tz either "GMT" (if set to gmtime), or "Local" (if set to servertime) GMT
    $iso ISO format timestamp 2025-04-22T10:23:55Z
    $rcs RCS format timestamp 2025/04/22 10:23:55
    $http E-mail & http format timestamp Tue, 22 Apr 2025 10:23:55 GMT
    $epoch Number of seconds since 00:00 on 1st January, 1970 1745317435
  • Variables can be shortened to 3 characters
  • Example: %GMTIME{"$day $month, $year - $hour:$min:$sec"}% expands to 22 Apr, 2025 - 10:23:55
  • ALERT! Note: When used in a template topic, this variable will be expanded when the template is used to create a new topic. See TWikiTemplates#TemplateTopicsVars for details.
  • Related: DISPLAYTIME, GMTIME, REVINFO, SERVERTIME

GRAY -- start gray colored text

  • GRAY is one of the rendering shortcut settings predefined in TWikiPreferences. See the section rendering shortcut settings in that topic for a complete list of colors.
  • Syntax: %GRAY% gray text %ENDCOLOR%
  • Expands to: gray text
  • Note: %<color>% text must end with %ENDCOLOR%. If you want to switch from one color to another one you first need to end the active color with %ENDCOLOR%, e.g. write %RED% some text %ENDCOLOR% %GREEN% more text %ENDCOLOR%.
  • Related: ENDCOLOR, TWikiPreferences, StandardColors

GREEN -- start green colored text

  • GREEN is one of the rendering shortcut settings predefined in TWikiPreferences. See the section rendering shortcut settings in that topic for a complete list of colors.
  • Syntax: %GREEN% green text %ENDCOLOR%
  • Expands to: green text
  • Note: %<color>% text must end with %ENDCOLOR%. If you want to switch from one color to another one you first need to end the active color with %ENDCOLOR%, e.g. write %RED% some text %ENDCOLOR% %GREEN% more text %ENDCOLOR%.
  • Related: ENDCOLOR, TWikiPreferences, StandardColors

GROUPS -- a formatted list of groups

H -- help icon

HOMETOPIC -- home topic in each web

HTTP -- get HTTP headers

HTTP_HOST -- environment variable

HTTPS -- get HTTPS headers

  • The same as %HTTP% but operates on the HTTPS environment variables present when the SSL protocol is in effect. Can be used to determine whether SSL is turned on.
  • Syntax: %HTTPS%
  • Syntax: %HTTPS{"Header-name"}%
  • Related: HTTP, REMOTE_ADDR, REMOTE_PORT, REMOTE_USER

I -- idea icon

ICON{"name"} -- small documentation graphic or icon of common attachment types

  • Generates the HTML img tag of a small graphic image attached to TWikiDocGraphics. Images typically have a 16x16 pixel size. You can select a specific image by name, or you can give a full filename, in which case the type of the file will be used to select one of a collection of common file type icons.
  • Syntax: %ICON{"name"}%
  • Examples:
    • %ICON{"flag-gray"}% returns flag-gray
    • %ICON{"pdf"}% returns pdf
    • %ICON{"smile.pdf"}% returns pdf
    • %ICON{"/dont/you/dare/smile.pdf"}% returns pdf
    • %ICON{"http://twiki.org/doc/xhtml.xsl"}% returns xsl
  • Graphic samples: arrowbright arrowbright, bubble bubble, choice-yes choice-yes, hand hand
  • File type samples: bmp bmp, doc doc, gif gif, hlp hlp, html html, wav mp3, pdf pdf, ppt ppt, txt txt, xls xls, xml xml, zip zip
  • Related: ICONURL, ICONURLPATH, TWikiPreferences, FileAttachments, TWikiDocGraphics

ICONURL{"name"} -- URL of small documentation graphic or icon

  • Generates the full URL of a TWikiDocGraphics image, which TWiki renders as an image. The related %ICON{"name"}% generates the full HTML img tag. Specify image name or full filename (see ICON for details on filenames.)
  • Syntax: %ICONURL{"name"}%
  • Examples:
    • %ICONURL{"arrowbright"}% returns http://twiki.keegel.id.au/twiki/pub/TWiki/TWikiDocGraphics/arrowbright.gif
    • %ICONURL{"novel.pdf"}% returns http://twiki.keegel.id.au/twiki/pub/TWiki/TWikiDocGraphics/pdf.gif
    • %ICONURL{"/queen/boheme.mp3"}% returns http://twiki.keegel.id.au/twiki/pub/TWiki/TWikiDocGraphics/mp3.gif
  • Related: ICONURLPATH, ICON, TWikiPreferences, FileAttachments, TWikiDocGraphics

ICONURLPATH{"name"} -- URL path of small documentation graphic or icon

  • Generates the URL path of a TWikiDocGraphics image, typically used in an HTML img tag. Specify image name or full filename (see ICON for details on filenames.)
  • Syntax: %ICONURLPATH{"name"}%
  • Examples:
    • %ICONURLPATH{"locktopic"}% returns /twiki/pub/TWiki/TWikiDocGraphics/locktopic.gif
    • %ICONURLPATH{"eggysmell.xml"}% returns /twiki/pub/TWiki/TWikiDocGraphics/xml.gif
    • %ICONURLPATH{"/doc/xhtml.xsl"}% returns /twiki/pub/TWiki/TWikiDocGraphics/xsl.gif
  • Related: ICONURL, ICON, TWikiPreferences, FileAttachments, TWikiDocGraphics

IF{"condition" ...} -- simple conditionals

  • Evaluate a condition and show one text or another based on the result. See details in IfStatements
  • Syntax: %IF{"CONDITION" then="THEN" else="ELSE"}% shows "THEN" if "CONDITION" evaluates to TRUE, otherwise "ELSE" will be shown
  • Example: %IF{"defined FUNFACTOR" then="FUNFACTOR is defined" else="FUNFACTOR is not defined"}% renders as FUNFACTOR is not defined
  • Related: $IF() of SpreadSheetPlugin

INCLUDE{"page"} -- include other topic or web page

  • Syntax: %INCLUDE{"page" ...}%
  • Supported parameters:
    Parameter: Description: Default:
    "SomeTopic" The name of a topic located in the current web, i.e. %INCLUDE{"WebNotify"}%  
    "Web.Topic" A topic in another web, i.e. %INCLUDE{"TWiki.SiteMap"}%  
    "http://..." A full qualified URL, i.e. %INCLUDE{"http://twiki.org:80/index.html"}%. Supported content types are text/html and text/plain.
    IDEA! if the URL resolves to an attachment file on the server this will automatically translate to a server-side include.     		 
    pattern="..." Include a subset of a topic or a web page. Specify a RegularExpression that scans from start ('^') to end and contains the text you want to keep in parenthesis, e.g., pattern="^.*?(from here.*?to here).*". IncludeTopicsAndWebPages has more. none
    rev="2" Include a previous topic revision; N/A for URLs top revision
    raw="on" When a page is included, normally TWiki will process it, doing the following: 1) Alter relative links to point back to originating host, 2) Remove some basic HTML tags (html, head, body, script) and finally 3) Remove newlines from HTML tags spanning multiple lines. If you prefer to include exactly what is in the source of the originating page set this to on.
    raw="on" is short for disableremoveheaders="on", disableremovescript="on", disableremovebody="on", disablecompresstags="on" and disablerewriteurls="on".     		disabled
    literal="on" While using the raw option will indeed include the raw content, the included content will still be processed and rendered like regular topic content. To disable parsing of the included content, set the literal option to "on". disabled
    disableremoveheaders="on" Bypass stripping headers from included HTML (everything until first </head> tag) disabled
    disableremovescript="on" Bypass stripping all <script> tags from included HTML disabled
    disableremovebody="on" Bypass stripping the </body> tag and everything around over and below it disabled
    disablecompresstags="on" Bypass replacing newlines in HTML tags with spaces. This compression step rewrites unmatched <'s into &lt; entities unless bypassed disabled
    disablerewriteurls="on" Bypass rewriting relative URLs into absolute ones disabled
    warn="off" Warn if topic include fails: Fail silently (if off); output default warning (if set to on); else, output specific text (use $topic for topic name) %INCLUDEWARNING% preferences setting
    section="name" Includes only the specified named section, as defined in the included topic by the STARTSECTION and ENDSECTION variables. Nothing is shown if the named section does not exists.  
    PARONE="val 1"
      PARTWO="val 2"         		Any other parameter will be defined as a variable within the scope of the included topic. The example parameters on the left will result in %PARONE% and %PARTWO% being defined within the included topic.  
  • Note: JavaScript in included webpages is filtered out as a security precaution per default (disable filter with disableremovescript parameter)
  • Examples: See IncludeTopicsAndWebPages
  • Related: BASETOPIC, BASEWEB, INCLUDINGTOPIC, INCLUDINGWEB, STARTINCLUDE, STOPINCLUDE, STARTSECTION, ENDSECTION

INCLUDINGTOPIC -- name of topic that includes current topic

  • The name of the topic that includes the current topic - same as %TOPIC% in case there is no include
  • Syntax: %INCLUDINGTOPIC%
  • Related: BASETOPIC, INCLUDINGWEB, INCLUDE, TOPIC

INCLUDINGWEB -- web that includes current topic

  • The web name of the topic that includes the current topic - same as %WEB% if there is no INCLUDE.
  • Syntax: %INCLUDINGWEB%
  • Related: BASEWEB, INCLUDINGTOPIC, INCLUDE, WEB

LANGUAGE -- current user's language

  • Returns the language code for the language used as the current user. This is the language actually used by TWiki Internationalization (e.g. in user interface).
  • The language is detected from the user's browser, unless some site/web/user/session-defined setting overrides it:
    • If the LANGUAGE preference is set, it's used as user's language instead of any language detected from the browser.
    • Avoid defining LANGUAGE at a non per-user way, so each user can choose his/her preferred language.
  • Related: LANGUAGES

LANGUAGES -- list available TWiki languages

  • List the languages available (as PO files) to TWiki. Those are the languages in which TWiki's user interface is available.
  • Syntax: %LANGUAGES{...}%
  • Supported parameters:
    Parameter: Description: Default:
    format format for each item. See below for variables available in the format string. "   * $langname"
    separator separator between items. "\n" (newline)
    marker="selected" Text for $marker if the item matches selection "selected"
    selection="%LANGUAGE%" Current language to be selected in list (none)
  • format variables:
    Variable Meaning
    $langname language's name, as informed by the translators
    $langtag language's tag. Ex: en, pt-br, etc.
  • Example: <select>%LANGUAGES{format="<option $marker value='$langtag'>$langname</option>" selection="%LANGUAGE%"}%</select> creates an option list of the available languages with the current language selected

LIME -- start lime colored text

  • LIME is one of the rendering shortcut settings predefined in TWikiPreferences. See the section rendering shortcut settings in that topic for a complete list of colors.
  • Syntax: %LIME% lime text %ENDCOLOR%
  • Expands to: lime text
  • Note: %<color>% text must end with %ENDCOLOR%. If you want to switch from one color to another one you first need to end the active color with %ENDCOLOR%, e.g. write %RED% some text %ENDCOLOR% %GREEN% more text %ENDCOLOR%.
  • Related: ENDCOLOR, TWikiPreferences, StandardColors

LOCALSITEPREFS -- web.topicname of site preferences topic

  • The full name of the local site preferences topic. These local site preferences overload the system level preferences defined in TWiki.TWikiPreferences.
  • Syntax: %LOCALSITEPREFS%
  • Expands to: Main.TWikiPreferences, renders as TWikiPreferences

LOGIN -- present a full login link

LOGOUT -- present a full logout link

M -- moved to... icon

MAINWEB -- synonym for USERSWEB

  • Deprecated. Please use %USERSWEB% instead.

MAKETEXT -- creates text using TWiki's I18N infrastructure

  • Syntax: %MAKETEXT{"string" args="..."}%
  • Supported parameters:
    Parameter Description Default
    "text" or string="text" The text to be displayed. none
    args="param1, param2" a comma-separated list of arguments to be interpolated in the string, replacing the [_N] placeholders in it. none
  • Examples:
    • %MAKETEXT{string="Notes:"}%
      expands to
      Notes:
    • %MAKETEXT{"If you have any questions, please contact [_1]." args="%WIKIWEBMASTER%"}%
      expands to
      If you have any questions, please contact webmaster@keegel.id.au.
    • %MAKETEXT{"Did you want to [[[_1]][reset [_2]'s password]]?" args="%SYSTEMWEB%.ResetPassword,%WIKIUSERNAME%"}%
      expands to
      Did you want to reset Main.TWikiGuest's password?
  • Notes:
    • TWiki will translate the string to the current user's language only if it has such string in its translation table for that language.
    • Amperstands (&) followed by one letter (one of a...z, A...Z) (say, X) in the translatable string will be translated to <span class='twikiAccessKey'>X</span>. This is used to implement access keys. If you want to write an actual amperstand that stays just before a letter, write two consecutive amperstands (&&): they will be transformed in just one.
    • translatable string starting with underscores (_) are reserved. You cannot use translatable phrases starting with an underscore.
    • Make sure that the translatable string is constant. Specially, do not include %VARIABLES% inside the translatable strings (since they will get expanded before the %MAKETEXT{...}% itself is handled).

MAROON -- start maroon colored text

  • MAROON is one of the rendering shortcut settings predefined in TWikiPreferences. See the section rendering shortcut settings in that topic for a complete list of colors.
  • Syntax: %MAROON% maroon text %ENDCOLOR%
  • Expands to: maroon text
  • Note: %<color>% text must end with %ENDCOLOR%. If you want to switch from one color to another one you first need to end the active color with %ENDCOLOR%, e.g. write %RED% some text %ENDCOLOR% %GREEN% more text %ENDCOLOR%.
  • Related: ENDCOLOR, TWikiPreferences, StandardColors

META -- displays meta-data

  • Provided mainly for use in templates, this variable generates the parts of the topic view that relate to meta-data (attachments, forms etc.) The formfield item is the most likely to be useful to casual users.
  • Syntax: %META{ "item" ...}%
  • Parameters:
    Item Options Description
    "formfield" name="...": name of the field. The field value can be shortened as described in FormattedSearch for $formfield
    newline="...": by default, each newline character will be rewritten to <br /> to allow metadata that contains newlines to be used in tables, etc. $n indicates a newline character.
    bar="...": by default, each vertical bar is rewritten to an HTML entity so as to not be mistaken for a table separator.     		Show a single form field
    "form" none Generates the table showing the form fields. See Form Templates
    "attachments" all="on" to show hidden attachments.
    title="..." to show a title - only if attachments are displayed.
    template="..." to use a custom template for the rendering of attachments; default attachtables is used.     		Generates the list of attachments
    "moved" none Details of any topic moves
    "parent" dontrecurse="on": By default recurses up tree, this has some cost.
    nowebhome="on": Suppress WebHome.
    prefix="...": Prefix that goes before parents, but only if there are parents, default "".
    format="...": Format string used to display each parent topic where $web expands to the web name, and $topic expands to the topic name; default: "[[$web.$topic][$topic]]"
    suffix="...": Suffix, only appears if there are parents; default "".
    separator="...": Separator between parents; default " > ".     		Generates the parent link
  • Related: METASEARCH

METASEARCH -- special search of meta data

  • Syntax: %METASEARCH{...}%
  • Supported parameters:
    Parameter: Description: Default:
    type="topicmoved" What sort of search is required?
    "topicmoved" if search for a topic that may have been moved
    "parent" if searching for topics that have a specific parent i.e. its children
    "field" if searching for topics that have a particular form field value (use the name and value parameters to specify which field to search)     		Required
    web="%WEB%" Wiki web to search: A web, a list of webs separated by whitespace, or all webs. Current web
    topic="%TOPIC%" The topic the search relates to, for topicmoved and parent searches All topics in a web
    name form field to search, for field type searches. May be a regular expression (see SEARCH).  
    value form field value, for field type searches. May be a regular expression (see SEARCH).  
    title="Title" Text that is prefixed to any search results empty
    format="..." Custom format results. Supports same format strings as SEARCH. See FormattedSearch for usage, variables & examples Results in table
    default="none" Default text shown if no search hit Empty
  • Example: %METASEARCH{type="topicmoved" web="%WEB%" topic="%TOPIC%" title="This topic used to exist and was moved to: "}%
  • Example: You may want to use this in WebTopicViewTemplate and WebTopicNonWikiTemplate:
    %METASEARCH{type="parent" web="%WEB%" topic="%TOPIC%" title="Children: "}%
  • Example: %METASEARCH{type="field" name="Country" value="China"}%
  • Related: SEARCH, META
  • ALERT! Note: METASEARCH is deprecated in favour of the new and much more powerful query type search. See SEARCH and QuerySearch.

N -- "new" icon

NAVY -- start navy blue colored text

  • NAVY is one of the rendering shortcut settings predefined in TWikiPreferences. See the section rendering shortcut settings in that topic for a complete list of colors.
  • Syntax: %NAVY% navy text %ENDCOLOR%
  • Expands to: navy text
  • Note: %<color>% text must end with %ENDCOLOR%. If you want to switch from one color to another one you first need to end the active color with %ENDCOLOR%, e.g. write %RED% some text %ENDCOLOR% %GREEN% more text %ENDCOLOR%.
  • Related: ENDCOLOR, TWikiPreferences, StandardColors

NOP -- template text not to be expanded in instantiated topics

  • Syntax: %NOP%
    • In normal topic text, expands to <nop>, which prevents expansion of adjacent variables and wikiwords
    • When the topic containing this is used as a template for another topic, it is removed.
  • Syntax: %NOP{...}% deprecated
    • In normal topic text, expands to whatever is in the curly braces (if anything).
    • ALERT! Note: This is deprecated. Do not use it. Use %STARTSECTION{type="templateonly"}% .. %ENDSECTION{type="templateonly"}% instead (see TWikiTemplates for more details).
  • Related: STARTSECTION, TWikiTemplates

NOTIFYTOPIC -- name of the notify topic

OLIVE -- start olive green colored text

  • OLIVE is one of the rendering shortcut settings predefined in TWikiPreferences. See the section rendering shortcut settings in that topic for a complete list of colors.
  • Syntax: %OLIVE% olive text %ENDCOLOR%
  • Expands to: olive text
  • Note: %<color>% text must end with %ENDCOLOR%. If you want to switch from one color to another one you first need to end the active color with %ENDCOLOR%, e.g. write %RED% some text %ENDCOLOR% %GREEN% more text %ENDCOLOR%.
  • Related: ENDCOLOR, TWikiPreferences, StandardColors

ORANGE -- start orange colored text

  • ORANGE is one of the rendering shortcut settings predefined in TWikiPreferences. See the section rendering shortcut settings in that topic for a complete list of colors.
  • Syntax: %ORANGE% orange text %ENDCOLOR%
  • Expands to: orange text
  • Note: %<color>% text must end with %ENDCOLOR%. If you want to switch from one color to another one you first need to end the active color with %ENDCOLOR%, e.g. write %RED% some text %ENDCOLOR% %GREEN% more text %ENDCOLOR%.
  • Related: ENDCOLOR, TWikiPreferences, StandardColors

P -- pencil icon

PINK -- start pink colored text

  • PINK is one of the rendering shortcut settings predefined in TWikiPreferences. See the section rendering shortcut settings in that topic for a complete list of colors.
  • Syntax: %PINK% pink text %ENDCOLOR%
  • Expands to: pink text
  • Note: %<color>% text must end with %ENDCOLOR%. If you want to switch from one color to another one you first need to end the active color with %ENDCOLOR%, e.g. write %RED% some text %ENDCOLOR% %GREEN% more text %ENDCOLOR%.
  • Related: ENDCOLOR, TWikiPreferences, StandardColors

PLUGINDESCRIPTIONS -- list of plugin descriptions

  • Syntax: %PLUGINDESCRIPTIONS%
  • Expands to:
    • SpreadSheetPlugin (any TWiki, $Rev: 16273 (22 Jan 2008) $): Add spreadsheet calculation like "$SUM( $ABOVE() )" to TWiki tables and other topic text
    • BlackListPlugin (2013-03-22, $Rev: 25492 (2013-03-22) $): Utility to keep malicious users away from a public TWiki site
    • BreadCrumbsPlugin (v2.01, $Rev: 0 (01 Sep 2008) $): A flexible way to display breadcrumbs navigation
    • CommentPlugin (TWiki-4, $Rev: 15776 (22 Jan 2008) $): Allows users to quickly post comments to a page without an edit/preview/save cycle
    • DpSyntaxHighlighterPlugin (1.5.2, $Rev: 16559 (12 Dec 2008) $): Client side syntax highlighting using the dp.SyntaxHighlighter
    • EditHiddenTablePlugin (Dakar, $Rev: 15561 (03 Jul 2008) $): Edit TWiki tables rows using a form
    • EditTablePlugin (4.7.10, $Rev: 16239 (22 Jan 2008) $): Edit TWiki tables using edit fields, date pickers and drop down boxes
    • EditTablerowPlugin: (disabled)
    • ExcelImportExportPlugin: (disabled)
    • FilterPlugin (1.51, $Rev: 16970 (03 Jul 2008) $): Substitute and extract information from content by using regular expressions
    • FlexWebListPlugin (v1.23, $Rev: 16971 (03 Jul 2008) $): Flexible way to display hierarchical weblists
    • IfDefinedPlugin (v1.02, $Rev: 16972 (03 Jul 2008) $): Render content conditionally
    • ImgPlugin (Dakar, $Rev: 10608$): Allows TWiki variable-style insertion of images in topics
    • InterwikiPlugin (Dakar, $Rev: 14913 (17 Sep 2007) $): Link ExternalSite:Page text to external sites based on aliases defined in a rules topic
    • JQueryPlugin (0.90, $Rev: 17031 (16 Jul 2008) $): jQuery JavaScript library for TWiki
    • JQueryTwistyPlugin (1.2, $Rev: 16736 (03 Jul 2008) $): Twisty section JavaScript library to open/close content dynamically
    • NatSkinPlugin (3.00-pre20, $Rev: 16978 (03 Jul 2008) $): Theming engine for NatSkin
    • PhotoarchivePlugin: (disabled)
    • PreferencesPlugin: (disabled)
    • RedDotPlugin (1.40, $Rev: 16137 (03 Jan 2008) $): Renders edit-links as little red dots
    • RenderListPlugin (2.0, $Rev: 16235 (22 Jan 2008) $): Render bullet lists in a variety of formats
    • SlideShowPlugin (Any TWiki, $Rev: 15091 (22 Jan 2008) $): Create web based presentations based on topics with headings.
    • SmartEditPlugin (Dakar, $Rev: 9598$): Provide SmartEditAddOn
    • SmiliesPlugin (Dakar, $Rev: 16049 (22 Jan 2008) $): Render smilies as icons, like smile for  :-) or eek! for  :eek:
    • TablePlugin (1.032, $Rev: 16182 (22 Jan 2008) $): Control attributes of tables and sorting of table columns
    • TinyMCEPlugin (03 Aug 2008, $Rev: 17303 (12 Dec 2008) $): Integration of TinyMCE? with WysiwygPlugin
    • TopicCreatePlugin (1.000): Automatically create a set of topics and attachments at topic save time
    • TreeBrowserPlugin (v1.8): Renders a list as a collapsable/expandable tree.
    • TreePlugin (1.7): Dynamic generation of TWiki topic trees
    • TwistyPlugin (1.4.9, $Rev: 15653 (19 Nov 2007) $): Twisty section JavaScript library to open/close content dynamically
    • WysiwygPlugin (03 Aug 2008, $Rev: 17720 (12 Dec 2008) $): Translator framework for Wysiwyg editors
  • Related: ACTIVATEDPLUGINS, FAILEDPLUGINS, PLUGINVERSION

PLUGINVERSION -- the version of a TWiki Plugin, or the TWiki Plugins API

  • Syntax: %PLUGINVERSION{"name"}% to get the version of a specific plugin
  • Example: %PLUGINVERSION{"InterwikiPlugin"}% expands to $Rev: 14913 (17 Sep 2007) $
  • Syntax: %PLUGINVERSION% to get the version of the API
  • Expands to: 1.2
  • Related: WIKIVERSION, ACTIVATEDPLUGINS, FAILEDPLUGINS, PLUGINDESCRIPTIONS

PUBURL -- the base URL of attachments

PUBURLPATH -- the base URL path of attachments

PURPLE -- start purple colored text

  • PURPLE is one of the rendering shortcut settings predefined in TWikiPreferences. See the section rendering shortcut settings in that topic for a complete list of colors.
  • Syntax: %PURPLE% purple text %ENDCOLOR%
  • Expands to: purple text
  • Note: %<color>% text must end with %ENDCOLOR%. If you want to switch from one color to another one you first need to end the active color with %ENDCOLOR%, e.g. write %RED% some text %ENDCOLOR% %GREEN% more text %ENDCOLOR%.
  • Related: ENDCOLOR, TWikiPreferences, StandardColors

Q -- question icon

QUERYPARAMS -- show paramaters to the query

  • Expands the parameters to the query that was used to display the page.
  • Syntax: %QUERYPARAMS{...}%
  • Parameters:
    • format="..." format string for each entry, default $name=$value
    • separator="..." separator string, default separator="$n" (newline)
    • encoding="..." the encoding to apply to parameter values; see ENCODE for a description of the available encodings. If this parameter is not given, no encoding is performed.
  • The following escape sequences are expanded in the format string:
Sequence: Expands To:
$name Name of the parameter
$value String value of the parameter. Multi-valued parameters will have a "row" for each value.
$n or $n() New line. Use $n() if followed by alphanumeric character, e.g. write Foo$n()Bar instead of Foo$nBar
$nop or $nop() Is a "no operation". This variable gets removed; useful for nested search
$quot Double quote (") (\" also works)
$percnt Percent sign (%)
$dollar Dollar sign ($)

  • Example:
    • %QUERYPARAMS{format="<input type='hidden' name='$name' value='$value' encoding="entity" />"}%
  • See also QUERYSTRING, URLPARAM

QUERYSTRING -- full, unprocessed string of parameters to this URL

  • String of all the URL parameters that were on the URL used to get to the current page. For example, if you add ?name=Samantha;age=24;eyes=blue to this URL you can see this in action. This string can be appended to a URL to pass parameter values on to another page.
  • ALERT! Note: URLs built this way are typically restricted in length, typically to 2048 characters. If you need more space than this, you will need to use an HTML form and %QUERYPARAMS%.
  • Syntax: %QUERYSTRING%
  • Expands to: rev=28;skin=clean.nat%2Cpattern
  • Related: QUERYPARAMS, URLPARAM

RED -- start red colored text

  • RED is one of the rendering shortcut settings predefined in TWikiPreferences. See the section rendering shortcut settings in that topic for a complete list of colors.
  • Syntax: %RED% red text %ENDCOLOR%
  • Expands to: red text
  • Note: %<color>% text must end with %ENDCOLOR%. If you want to switch from one color to another one you first need to end the active color with %ENDCOLOR%, e.g. write %RED% some text %ENDCOLOR% %GREEN% more text %ENDCOLOR%.
  • Related: ENDCOLOR, TWikiPreferences, StandardColors

REMOTE_ADDR -- environment variable

REMOTE_PORT -- environment variable

REMOTE_USER -- environment variable

RENDERLIST -- render bullet lists in a variety of formats

  • The %RENDERLIST% variable is handled by the RenderListPlugin
  • Syntax: %RENDERLIST%
  • Syntax: %RENDERLIST{ "org" focus="Sales.WestCoastTeam" }%
  • Example:
    %RENDERLIST{ "org" }%
       * [[Eng.WebHome][Engineering]]
          * [[Eng.TechPubs][Tech Pubs]]
       * [[Sales.WestCoastTeam][Sales]]
          * [[Sales.EastCoastTeam][East Coast]]
          * [[Sales.WestCoastTeam][West Coast]]
  • Related: RenderListPlugin

REVINFO -- revision information of current topic

REVINFO{"format"} -- formatted revision information of topic

  • Syntax: %REVINFO{"format"}%
  • Supported parameters:
    Parameter: Description: Default:
    "format" Format of revision information, see supported variables below "r1.$rev - $date - $wikiusername"
    web="..." Name of web Current web
    topic="..." Topic name Current topic
    rev="1.5" Specific revison number Latest revision
  • Supported variables in format:
    Variable: Unit: Example
    $web Name of web Current web
    $topic Topic name Current topic
    $rev Revison number. Prefix r1. to get the usual r1.5 format 5
    $username Login username of revision jsmith
    $wikiname WikiName of revision JohnSmith
    $wikiusername WikiName with Main web prefix Main.JohnSmith
    $date Revision date. Actual date format defined as {DefaultDateFormat} in configure 21 Sep 2006
    $time Revision time 23:24:25
    $iso Revision date in ISO date format 2006-09-22T06:24:25Z
    $min, $sec, etc. Same date format qualifiers as GMTIME{"format"}  
  • Example: %REVINFO{"$date - $wikiusername" rev="1.1"}% returns revision info of first revision
  • Related: GMTIME{"format"}, REVINFO

S -- red star icon

SCRIPTNAME -- name of current script

  • The name of the current script is shown, including script suffix, if any (for example viewauth.cgi)
  • Syntax: %SCRIPTNAME%
  • Expands to: view
  • Related: SCRIPTSUFFIX, SCRIPTURL, SCRIPTURLPATH

SCRIPTSUFFIX -- script suffix

  • Some TWiki installations require a file extension for CGI scripts, such as .pl or .cgi
  • Syntax: %SCRIPTSUFFIX%
  • Expands to:
  • Related: SCRIPTNAME, SCRIPTURL, SCRIPTURLPATH

SCRIPTURL -- base URL of TWiki scripts

SCRIPTURL{"script"} -- URL of TWiki script

  • Syntax: %SCRIPTURL{"script"}%
  • Expands to: http://twiki.keegel.id.au/twiki/bin/script
  • Example: To get the authenticated version of the current topic you can write %SCRIPTURL{"viewauth"}%/%WEB%/%TOPIC% which expands to http://twiki.keegel.id.au/twiki/bin/viewauth/TWiki//TWikiVariables
  • ALERT! Note: In most cases you should use %SCRIPTURLPATH{"script"}% instead, as it works with URL rewriting much better
  • Related: PUBURL, SCRIPTNAME, SCRIPTSUFFIX, SCRIPTURL, SCRIPTURLPATH, SCRIPTURLPATH{"script"}

SCRIPTURLPATH -- base URL path of TWiki scripts

  • As %SCRIPTURL%, but doesn't include the protocol and host part of the URL
  • Syntax: %SCRIPTURLPATH%
  • Expands to: /twiki/bin
  • Note: The edit script should always be used in conjunction with ?t=%GMTIME{"$epoch"}% to ensure pages about to be edited are not cached in the browser
  • Related: PUBURLPATH, SCRIPTNAME, SCRIPTSUFFIX, SCRIPTURL, SCRIPTURLPATH{"script"}

SCRIPTURLPATH{"script"} -- URL path of TWiki script

SEARCH{"text"} -- search content

  • Inline search, shows a search result embedded in a topic
  • Syntax: %SEARCH{"text" ...}%
  • Supported parameters:
    Parameter: Description: Default:
    "text" Search term. Is a keyword search, literal search, regular expression search, or query, depending on the type parameter. SearchHelp has more required
    search="text" (Alternative to above) N/A
    web="Name"
    web="Main, Know"
    web="all"     		Comma-separated list of webs to search. You can specifically exclude webs from an all search using a minus sign - for example, web="all,-Secretweb". The special word all means all webs that do not have the NOSEARCHALL variable set to on in their WebPreferences. Note that TWikiAccessControls are respected when searching webs; it is much better to use them than NOSEARCHALL. Current web
    topic="WebPreferences"
    topic="*Bug"     		Limit search to topics: A topic, a topic with asterisk wildcards, or a list of topics separated by comma. Note this is a list of topic names and must not include web names. All topics in a web
    excludetopic="Web*"
    excludetopic="WebHome, WebChanges"     		Exclude topics from search: A topic, a topic with asterisk wildcards, or a list of topics separated by comma. Note this is a list of topic names and must not include web names. None
    scope="topic"
    scope="text"
    scope="all"     		Search topic name (title); the text (body) of topic; or all (title and body) "text"
    type="keyword"
    type="word"
    type="literal"
    type="regex"
    type="query"     		Control how the search is performed when scope="text" or scope="all"
    keyword: use Google-like controls as in soap "web service" -shampoo; searches word parts: using the example, topics with "soapsuds" will be found as well, but topics with "shampoos" will be excluded
    word: identical to keyword but searches whole words: topics with "soapsuds" will not be found, and topics with "shampoos" will not be excluded
    literal: search for the exact string, like web service
    regex: use a RegularExpression search like soap;web service;!shampoo; to search on whole words use \bsoap\b
    query: query search of form fields and other meta-data, like (Firstname='Emma' OR Firstname='John') AND Lastname='Peel'     		%SEARCHVAR- DEFAULTTYPE% preferences setting (literal)
    order="topic"
    order="created"
    order="modified"
    order="editby"
    order=
     "formfield(name)"         		Sort the results of search by the topic names, topic creation time, last modified time, last editor, or named field of TWikiForms. The sorting is done web by web; if you want to sort across webs, create a formatted table and sort it with TablePlugin's initsort. Note that dates are sorted most recent date last (i.e at the bottom of the table). Sort by topic name
    limit="all"
    limit="16"     		Limit the number of results returned. This is done after sorting if order is specified All results
    date="..." limits the results to those pages with latest edit time in the given time interval. All results
    reverse="on" Reverse the direction of the search Ascending search
    casesensitive="on" Case sensitive search Ignore case
    bookview="on" BookView search, e.g. show complete topic text Show topic summary
    nonoise="on" Shorthand for nosummary="on" nosearch="on" nototal="on" zeroresults="off" noheader="on" noempty="on" Off
    nosummary="on" Show topic title only Show topic summary
    nosearch="on" Suppress search string Show search string
    noheader="on" Suppress default search header
    Topics: Changed: By: , unless a header is explicitly specified     		Show default search header, unless search is inline and a format is specified (Cairo compatibility)
    nototal="on" Do not show number of topics found Show number
    zeroresults="off" Suppress all output if there are no hits zeroresults="on", displays: "Number of topics: 0"
    noempty="on" Suppress results for webs that have no hits. Show webs with no hits
    header="..."
    format="..."     		Custom format results: see FormattedSearch for usage, variables & examples Results in table
    expandvariables="on" Expand variables before applying a FormattedSearch on a search hit. Useful to show the expanded text, e.g. to show the result of a SpreadSheetPlugin %CALC{}% instead of the formula Raw text
    multiple="on" Multiple hits per topic. Each hit can be formatted. The last token is used in case of a regular expression ";" and search Only one hit per topic
    nofinalnewline="on" If on, the search variable does not end in a line by itself. Any text continuing immediately after the search variable on the same line will be rendered as part of the table generated by the search, if appropriate. off
    recurse="on" Recurse into subwebs, if subwebs are enabled. off
    separator=", " Line separator between search hits "$n" (Newline)
    newline="%BR%" Line separator within a search hit. Useful if the format="" parameter contains a $pattern() that captures more than one line, i.e. contents of a textfield in a form. "$n" (Newline)
  • Example: %SEARCH{"wiki" web="Main" scope="topic"}%
  • Example with format: %SEARCH{"FAQ" scope="topic" nosearch="on" nototal="on" header="| *Topic: * | *Summary: * |" format="| $topic | $summary |"% (displays results in a table with header - details)
  • HELP Hint: If the TWiki:Plugins.TablePlugin is installed, you may set a %TABLE{}% variable just before the %SEARCH{}% to alter the output of a search. Example: %TABLE{ tablewidth="90%" }%
  • Related: METASEARCH, TOPICLIST, WEBLIST, FormattedSearch, SearchHelp, SearchPatternCookbook, RegularExpression

SERVERTIME -- server time

SERVERTIME{"format"} -- formatted server time

  • Same format qualifiers as %GMTIME%
  • Syntax: %SERVERTIME{"format"}%
  • Example: %SERVERTIME{"$hou:$min"}% expands to 20:23
  • ALERT! Note: When used in a template topic, this variable will be expanded when the template is used to create a new topic. See TWikiTemplates#TemplateTopicsVars for details.
  • Related: DISPLAYTIME, GMTIME, SERVERTIME

SESSIONID -- unique ID for this session

SESSIONVAR -- name of CGI and session variable that stores the session ID

SESSION_VARIABLE -- get, set or clear a session variable

SILVER -- start silver colored text

  • SILVER is one of the rendering shortcut settings predefined in TWikiPreferences. See the section rendering shortcut settings in that topic for a complete list of colors.
  • Syntax: %SILVER% silver text %ENDCOLOR%
  • Expands to: silver text
  • Note: %<color>% text must end with %ENDCOLOR%. If you want to switch from one color to another one you first need to end the active color with %ENDCOLOR%, e.g. write %RED% some text %ENDCOLOR% %GREEN% more text %ENDCOLOR%.
  • Related: ENDCOLOR, TWikiPreferences, StandardColors

SLIDESHOWEND -- end slideshow

SLIDESHOWSTART -- convert a topic with headings into a slideshow

  • The %SLIDESHOWSTART% variable is handled by the SlideShowPlugin
  • Syntax: %SLIDESHOWSTART%
  • Syntax: %SLIDESHOWSTART{ template="MyOwnSlideTemplate" }%
  • Example:
    %SLIDESHOWSTART%
    ---++ Sample Slide 1
        * Bullet 1
        * Bullet 2
    ---++ Sample Slide 2
        * Bullet 1
        * Bullet 2
    %SLIDESHOWEND%
  • Related: SLIDESHOWEND, SlideShowPlugin

SPACEDTOPIC -- topic name, spaced and URL-encoded deprecated

  • The current topic name with added URL-encoded spaces, for use in regular expressions that search for backlinks to the current topic
  • Syntax: %SPACEDTOPIC%
  • Expands to: Var%20*SPACEDTOPIC
  • ALERT! Note: This is a deprecated variable. It can be duplicated with %ENCODE{%SPACEOUT{"%TOPIC%" separator=" *"}%}%
  • Related: SPACEOUT, TOPIC, ENCODE

SPACEOUT{"string"} -- renders string with spaces inserted in sensible places

  • Inserts spaces after lower case letters that are followed by a digit or a capital letter, and after digits that are followed by a capital letter.
  • Useful for spacing out WikiWords
  • Syntax: %SPACEOUT{ "%TOPIC%" }%
  • Expands to: TWiki Variables
  • Supported parameters:
    Parameter: Description: Default:
    separator The separator to put between words e.g. %SPACEOUT{"DogsCatsBudgies" separator=", "}% -> Dogs, Cats, Budgies ' '
  • TIP Hint: Spaced out WikiWords are not automatically linked. To SPACEOUT a WikiWord but preserve the link use "double bracket" format. For example, [[WebHome][%SPACEOUT{"WebHome"}%]] expands to Web Home
  • Related: SPACEDTOPIC, $PROPERSPACE() of SpreadSheetPlugin

STARTINCLUDE -- start position of topic text if included

  • If present in included topic, start to include text from this location up to the end, or up to the location of the %STOPINCLUDE% variable. A normal view of the topic shows everything exept the %STARTINCLUDE% variable itself.
  • Note: If you want more than one part of the topic included, use %STARTSECTION{type="include"}% instead
  • Syntax: %STARTINCLUDE%
  • Related: INCLUDE, STARTSECTION, STOPINCLUDE

STARTSECTION -- marks the start of a section within a topic

  • Section boundaries are defined with %STARTSECTION{}% and %ENDSECTION{}%.
  • Sections may be given a name to help identify them, and/or a type, which changes how they are used.
    • type="section" - the default, used for a generic section, such as a named section used by INCLUDE.
    • type="include" - like %STARTINCLUDE% ... %STOPINCLUDE% except that you can have as many include blocks as you want (%STARTINCLUDE% is restricted to only one).
    • type="templateonly" - start position of text to be removed when a template topic is used. This is used to embed text that you do not want expanded when a new topic based on the template topic is created. See TWikiTemplates for more information.
  • Syntax: %STARTSECTION{"name"}% ................ %ENDSECTION{"name"}%
  • Syntax: %STARTSECTION{type="include"}% ........ %ENDSECTION{type="include"}%
  • Syntax: %STARTSECTION{type="templateonly"}% ... %ENDSECTION{type="templateonly"}%
  • Supported parameters:
    Parameter: Description: Default
    "name" Name of the section. Must be unique inside a topic. Generated name
    type="..." Type of the section; type "section", "include" or "templateonly" "section"
  • ALERT! Note: If a section is not given a name, it will be assigned one. Unnamed sections are assigned names starting with _SECTION0 for the first unnamed section in the topic, _SECTION1 for the second, etc..
  • ALERT! Note: You can define nested sections. It is not recommended to overlap sections, although it is valid in TWiki. Use named sections to make sure that the correct START and ENDs are matched. Section markers are not displayed when a topic is viewed.
  • Related: ENDSECTION, INCLUDE, NOP, STARTINCLUDE, STOPINCLUDE

STATISTICSTOPIC -- name of statistics topic

STOPINCLUDE -- end position of topic text if included

  • If present in included topic, stop to include text at this location and ignore the remaining text. A normal view of the topic shows everyting exept the %STOPINCLUDE% variable itself.
  • Syntax: %STOPINCLUDE%
  • Related: INCLUDE, STARTINCLUDE

SYSTEMWEB -- name of TWiki documentation web

  • The web containing all documentation and default preference settings
  • Syntax: %SYSTEMWEB%
  • Expands to: TWiki
  • Related: USERSWEB

T -- tip icon

TABLE{ attributes } -- control attributes of tables and sorting of table columns

  • The %TABLE{}% variable is handled by the TablePlugin
  • Syntax: %TABLE{ attributes }%

  • Supported attributes:
    Argument Comment Default value Example
    sort Set table sorting by clicking headers "on" or "off". unspecified sort="on"
    initsort Column to sort initially ("1" to number of columns). unspecified initsort="2"
    initdirection Initial sorting direction for initsort, set to "up" (descending) or "down" (ascending). unspecified initdirection="up"
    disableallsort Disable all sorting, both initsort and header sort. This is mainly used by plugins such as the EditTablePlugin to disable sorting in a table while editing the table. unspecified disableallsort="on"
    headerbg Header cell background colour. "#6b7f93" headerbg="#999999"
    headerbgsorted Header cell background colour of a sorted column. the value of headerbg headerbgsorted="#32596c"
    headercolor Header cell text colour. "#ffffff" headercolor="#0000cc"
    databg Data cell background colour, a comma separated list. Specify "none" for no colour, that is to use the colour/background of the page the table is on. "#edf4f9,#ffffff" databg="#f2f2f2,#ffffff"
    databgsorted Data cell background colour of a sorted column; see databg. the values of databg databgsorted="#d4e8e4,#e5f5ea"
    datacolor Data cell text colour, a comma separated list. unspecified datacolor="#0000CC, #000000"
    tableborder Table border width (pixels). "1" tableborder="2"
    tableframe Table frame, set to "void" (no sides), "above" (the top side only), "below" (the bottom side only), "hsides" (the top and bottom sides only), "lhs" (the left-hand side only), "rhs" (the right-hand side only), "vsides" (the right and left sides only), "box" (all four sides), "border" (all four sides). unspecified tableframe="hsides"
    tablerules Table rules, set to "none" (no rules), "groups" (rules will appear between row groups and column groups only), "rows" (rules will appear between rows only), "cols" (rules will appear between columns only), "all" (rules will appear between all rows and columns). unspecified tablerules="rows"
    cellpadding Cell padding (pixels). "0" cellpadding="0"
    cellspacing Cell spacing (pixels). "0" cellspacing="3"
    cellborder Cell border width (pixels). unspecified cellborder="0"
    valign Vertical alignment of cells and headers, set to "top", "middle", "bottom" or "baseline". unspecified valign="top"
    headervalign Vertical alignment of header cells; overrides valign. unspecified headervalign="top"
    datavalign Vertical alignment of data cells; overrides valign. unspecified datavalign="top"
    headeralign Header cell alignment, one value for all columns, or a comma separated list for different alignment of individual columns. Set to "left", "center", "right" or "justify". Overrides individual cell settings. unspecified headeralign="left,right"
    dataalign Data cell alignment, one value for all columns, or a comma separated list for different alignment of individual columns. Set to "left", "center", "right" or "justify". Overrides individual cell settings. unspecified dataalign="center"
    tablewidth Table width: Percentage of window width, or absolute pixel value. unspecified tablewidth="100%"
    columnwidths Column widths: Comma delimited list of column widths, percentage or absolute pixel value. unspecified columnwidths="80%,20%"
    headerrows Number of header rows to exclude from sort. (will be rendered in a HTML thead section) "1" headerrows="1"
    footerrows Number of footer rows to exclude from sort. (will be rendered in a HTML tfoot section) "0" footerrows="1"
    id Unique table identifier string, used for targeting a table with CSS. tableN (where N is the table order number on the page) id="userTable"
    summary Table summary used by screenreaders: A summary of what the table presents. It should provide an orientation for someone who listens to the table. unspecified summary="List of subscribed users"
    caption Table caption: A title that will be displayed just above the table. unspecified caption="Users"

  • Example:
    %TABLE{ tableborder="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="3" cellborder="0" }%
    | *A1* | *B1* |
    | A2 | B2 |
  • Related: See TablePlugin for more details

TEAL -- start teal colored text

  • TEAL is one of the rendering shortcut settings predefined in TWikiPreferences. See the section rendering shortcut settings in that topic for a complete list of colors.
  • Syntax: %TEAL% teal text %ENDCOLOR%
  • Expands to: teal text
  • Note: %<color>% text must end with %ENDCOLOR%. If you want to switch from one color to another one you first need to end the active color with %ENDCOLOR%, e.g. write %RED% some text %ENDCOLOR% %GREEN% more text %ENDCOLOR%.
  • Related: ENDCOLOR, TWikiPreferences, StandardColors

TOC -- table of contents of current topic

TOC{"Topic"} -- table of contents

  • Table of Contents. Shows a TOC that is generated automatically based on headings of a topic. Headings in WikiSyntax ("---++ text") and HTML ("<h2>text</h2>") are taken into account. Any heading text after "!!" is excluded from the TOC; for example, write "---+!! text" if you do not want to list a header in the TOC
  • Syntax: %TOC{"SomeTopic" ...}%
  • Supported parameters:
    Parameter: Description: Default:
    "TopicName" topic name Current topic
    web="Name" Name of web Current web
    depth="2" Limit depth of headings shown in TOC 6
    title="Some text" Title to appear at top of TOC none
  • Example: %TOC{depth="2"}%
  • Example: %TOC{"TWikiDocumentation" web="TWiki" title="Contents:"}%
  • Example: see TWiki:Sandbox.TestTopicInclude
  • TIP Hint: TOC will generate links to the headings, so when a reader clicks on a heading it will jump straight where that heading is anchored in the text. If you have two headings with exactly the same text, then their anchors will also be identical and they won't be able to jump to them. To make the anchors unique, you can add an invisible HTML comment to the text of the heading. This will be hidden in normal view, but will force the anchors to be different. For example, ---+ Heading <!--5-->.
  • Related: TOC

TOPIC -- name of current topic

  • %TOPIC% expands to the name of the topic. If you are looking at the text of an included topic, it is the name of the included topic.
  • Syntax: %TOPIC%
  • Expands to: TWikiVariables, renders as TWikiVariables
  • Related: BASETOPIC, INCLUDINGTOPIC, TOPICLIST, WEB

TOPICLIST{"format"} -- topic index of a web

  • List of all topics in a web. The "format" defines the format of one topic item. It may include variables: The $topic variable gets expanded to the topic name, $marker to marker parameter where topic matches selection, and $web to the name of the web, or any of the standard FormatTokens.
  • Syntax: %TOPICLIST{"format" ...}%
  • Supported parameters:
    Parameter: Description: Default:
    "format" Format of one line, may include $web (name of web), $topic (name of the topic), $marker (which expands to marker for the item matching selection only) "$topic"
    format="format" (Alternative to above) "$topic"
    separator=", " line separator "$n" (new line)
    marker="selected" Text for $marker if the item matches selection "selected"
    selection="TopicA, TopicB" Current value to be selected in list (none)
    web="Name" Name of web Current web
  • Example: %TOPICLIST{"   * $web.$topic"}% creates a bullet list of all topics
  • Example: %TOPICLIST{separator=", "}% creates a comma separated list of all topics
  • Example: %TOPICLIST{" <option>$topic</option>"}% creates an option list (for drop down menus)
  • Example: <select>%TOPICLIST{" <option $marker value='$topic'>$topic</option>" separator=" " selection="%TOPIC%"}%</select> creates an option list of web topics with the current topic selected
  • Related: SEARCH, WEBLIST

TOPICURL -- shortcut to viewing the current topic

TWIKIWEB -- synonym for SYSTEMWEB

  • Deprecated. Please use %SYSTEMWEB% instead.

U -- "updated" icon

URLPARAM{"name"} -- get value of a URL parameter

  • Returns the value of a URL parameter.
  • Syntax: %URLPARAM{"name"}%
  • Supported parameters:
    Parameter: Description: Default:
    "name" The name of a URL parameter required
    default="..." Default value in case parameter is empty or missing empty string
    newline="<br />" Convert newlines in textarea to other delimiters no conversion
    encode="entity" Encode special characters into HTML entities. See ENCODE for more details. no encoding
    encode="url" Encode special characters for URL parameter use, like a double quote into %22 no encoding
    encode="quote" Escape double quotes with backslashes (\"), does not change other characters; required when feeding URL parameters into other TWiki variables no encoding
    multiple="on"
    multiple="[[$item]]"     		If set, gets all selected elements of a <select multiple="multiple"> tag. A format can be specified, with $item indicating the element, e.g. multiple="Option: $item" first element
    separator=", " Separator between multiple selections. Only relevant if multiple is specified "\n" (new line)
  • Example: %URLPARAM{"skin"}% returns print for a .../view/TWiki//TWikiVariables?skin=print URL
  • ALERT! Note: URL parameters passed into HTML form fields must be entity ENCODEd.
  • ALERT! Note: Double quotes in URL parameters must be escaped when passed into other TWiki variables.
    Example: %SEARCH{ "%URLPARAM{ "search" encode="quotes" }%" noheader="on" }%
  • ALERT! Note: When used in a template topic, this variable will be expanded when the template is used to create a new topic. See TWikiTemplates#TemplateTopicsVars for details.
  • ALERT! Note: There is a risk that this variable could be misused for cross-site scripting.
  • Related: ENCODE, SEARCH, FormattedSearch, QUERYSTRING

Note If you have %URLPARAM{ in the value of a URL parameter, it will be modified to %<nop>URLPARAM{. This is to prevent an infinite loop during expansion.

USERINFO{"WikiName"} -- retrieve details about a user

  • Syntax: %USERINFO%
  • Expands to: guest, TWikiGuest, (comma-separated list of the username, wikiusername, and emails)
  • With formatted output, using tokens $emails, $username, $wikiname, $wikiusername, $groups and $admin ($admin returns 'true' or 'false'):
    • Example: %USERINFO{ format="$username is really $wikiname" }%
    • Expands to: guest is really TWikiGuest
  • Retrieve information about another user:
    • Example: %USERINFO{ "TWikiGuest" format="$username is really $wikiname" }%
    • Expands to: guest is really TWikiGuest
    • Note: The parameter should be the wikiname of a user. You can only get information about another user if the {AntiSpam}{HideUserDetails} configuration option is not enabled, or if you are an admin. (User details are hidden in this TWiki)
  • Related: USERNAME, WIKINAME, WIKIUSERNAME, TWikiUserAuthentication, ChangeEmailAddress

USERNAME -- your login username

USERSWEB -- name of users web

  • The web containing individual user topics, TWikiGroups, and customised site-wide preferences.
  • Syntax: %USERSWEB%
  • Expands to: Main
  • Related: SYSTEMWEB

VAR{"NAME" web="Web"} -- get a preference value from another web

  • Syntax: %VAR{"NAME" web="Web"}%
  • Example: To get %WEBBGCOLOR% of the Main web write %VAR{"WEBBGCOLOR" web="Main"}%, which expands to =#FFEFA6 =
  • Related: WEBPREFSTOPIC

VBAR -- vertical bar

WEB -- name of current web

  • %WEB% expands to the name of the web where the topic is located. If you are looking at the text of an included topic, it is the web where the included topic is located.
  • Syntax: %WEB%
  • Expands to: TWiki/
  • Related: BASEWEB, INCLUDINGWEB, TOPIC

WEBLIST{"format"} -- index of all webs

  • List of all webs. Obfusticated webs are excluded, e.g. webs with a NOSEARCHALL = on preference variable. The "format" defines the format of one web item. The $name variable gets expanded to the name of the web, $qname gets expanded to double quoted name, $marker to marker where web matches selection.
  • Syntax: %WEBLIST{"format" ...}%
  • Supported parameters:
    Parameter: Description: Default:
    "format" Format of one line, may include $name (the name of the web), $qname (the name of the web in double quotes), $indentedname (the name of the web with parent web names replaced by indents, for use in indented lists), and $marker (which expands to marker for the item matching selection only) "$name"
    format="format" (Alternative to above) "$name"
    separator=", " Line separator "$n" (new line)
    web="" if you specify $web in format, it will be replaced with this ""
    webs="public" Comma separated list of webs, public expands to all non-hidden.
    NOTE: Administrators will see all webs, not just the public ones     		"public"
    marker="selected" Text for $marker if the item matches selection "selected"
    selection="%WEB%" Current value to be selected in list selection="%WEB%"
    subwebs="Sandbox" show webs that are a sub-web of this one (recursivly) ""
  • Example: %WEBLIST{"   * [[$name.WebHome]]"}% - creates a bullet list of all webs.
  • Example: <form><select name="web"> %WEBLIST{"<option $marker value=$qname>$name</option>" webs="Trash, public" selection="%WEB%" separator=" "}% </select></form> - creates a dropdown of all public webs + Trash web, with the current web highlighted.
  • Related: TOPICLIST, SEARCH

WEBPREFSTOPIC -- name of web preferences topic

WHITE -- start white colored text

  • WHITE is one of the rendering shortcut settings predefined in TWikiPreferences. See the section rendering shortcut settings in that topic for a complete list of colors.
  • Syntax: %WHITE% white text %ENDCOLOR%
  • Expands to: white text  (shown with a gray background here)
  • Note: %<color>% text must end with %ENDCOLOR%. If you want to switch from one color to another one you first need to end the active color with %ENDCOLOR%, e.g. write %RED% some text %ENDCOLOR% %GREEN% more text %ENDCOLOR%.
  • Related: ENDCOLOR, TWikiPreferences, StandardColors

WIKIHOMEURL -- site home URL

  • Syntax %WIKIHOMEURL%
  • Expands to /twiki/bin/view
  • Defined in TWikiPreferences and normally per default set to %SCRIPTURLPATH{"view"}%
  • ALERT! Note: For the top bar logo URL use %WIKILOGOURL% defined in WebPreferences instead.
  • Related: WIKITOOLNAME

WIKINAME -- your Wiki username

WIKIPREFSTOPIC -- name of site-wide preferences topic

WIKITOOLNAME -- name of your TWiki site

WIKIUSERNAME -- your Wiki username with web prefix

WIKIUSERSTOPIC -- name of topic listing all registers users

  • Syntax: %WIKIUSERSTOPIC%
  • Expands to: TWikiUsers, with Main prefix renders as TWikiUsers
  • Related: WIKIUSERNAME

WIKIVERSION -- the version of the installed TWiki engine

X -- warning icon

Y -- "yes" icon

YELLOW -- start yellow colored text

  • YELLOW is one of the rendering shortcut settings predefined in TWikiPreferences. See the section rendering shortcut settings in that topic for a complete list of colors.
  • Syntax: %YELLOW% yellow text %ENDCOLOR%
  • Expands to: yellow text
  • Note: %<color>% text must end with %ENDCOLOR%. If you want to switch from one color to another one you first need to end the active color with %ENDCOLOR%, e.g. write %RED% some text %ENDCOLOR% %GREEN% more text %ENDCOLOR%.
  • Related: ENDCOLOR, TWikiPreferences, StandardColors

Warning: Can't find topic TWiki/.MetaDataDefinition

Warning: Can't find topic TWiki/.TWikiFormTemplate

TWiki Plugins

Add functionality to TWiki with readily available Plugins; create Plugins based on APIs

Overview

You can add Plugins to extend TWiki functionality, without altering the core code. A plug-in approach lets you:

  • add virtually unlimited features while keeping the main TWiki code compact and efficient;
  • heavily customize an installation and still do clean updates to new versions of TWiki;
  • rapidly develop new TWiki functions in Perl using the Plugin API.

Everything to do with TWiki Plugins - demos, new releases, downloads, development, general discussion - is available at TWiki.org, in the TWiki:Plugins web.

TWiki Plugins are developed and contributed by interested members of the community. Plugins are provided on an 'as is' basis; they are not a part of TWiki, but are independently developed and maintained.

Relevant links on TWiki.org:

See other types of extensions: TWikiAddOns, TWikiContribs, TWikiSkins

Installing Plugins

Each TWiki Plugin comes with its own documentation: step-by-step installation instructions, a detailed description of any special requirements, version details, and a working example for testing. Many Plugins have an install script that automates these steps for you.

Special Requirements: Some Plugins need certain Perl modules to be preinstalled on the host system. Plugins may also use other resources, like graphics, other modules, applications, and templates. You should be able to find detailed instructions in the Plugin's documentation.

Each Plugin has a standard release topic, located in the TWiki:Plugins web at TWiki.org. There's usually a number of other related topics, such as a developers page, and an appraisal page.

On-Site Pretesting

The recommended approach to testing new Plugins before making them public is to create a second local TWiki installation, and test the Plugin there. You can allow selected users access to the test area. Once you are satisfied that it won't compromise your main installation, you can install it there as well.

InstalledPlugins shows which Plugins are: 1) installed, 2) loading properly, and 3) what TWiki:Codev.PluginHandlers they invoke. Any failures are shown in the Errors section. The %FAILEDPLUGINS% variable can be used to debug failures. You may also want to check your webserver error log and the various TWiki log files.

Some Notes on Plugin Performance

The performance of the system depends to some extent on the number of Plugins installed and on the Plugin implementation. Some Plugins impose no measurable performance decrease, some do. For example, a Plugin might use many Perl libraries that need to be initialized with each page view (unless you run mod_perl). You can only really tell the performance impact by installing the Plugin and by measuring the performance with and without the new Plugin. Use the TWiki:Plugins.PluginBenchmarkAddOn, or test manually with the Apache ab utility. Example on Unix:
time wget -qO /dev/null /twiki/bin/view/TWiki/AbcPlugin

TIP If you need to install an "expensive" Plugin, but you only need its functionality only in a subset of your data, you can disable it elsewhere by defining the %DISABLEDPLUGINS% TWiki variable.

Define DISABLEDPLUGINS to be a comma-separated list of names of plugins to disable. Define it in Main.TWikiPreferences to disable those plugins everywhere, in the WebPreferences topic to disable them in an individual web, or in a topic to disable them in that topic. For example, 

   * Set DISABLEDPLUGINS = SpreadSheetPlugin, EditTablePlugin

Managing Installed Plugins

Some Plugins require additional settings or offer extra options that you have to select. Also, you may want to make a Plugin available only in certain webs, or temporarily disable it. And may want to list all available Plugins in certain topics. You can handle all of these management tasks with simple procedures:

Enabling Plugins

Plugins can be enabled and disabled with the configure script. An installed Plugin needs to be enabled before it can be used.

Plugin Evaluation Order

By default, TWiki executes Plugins in alphabetical order on Plugin name. It is possible to change the order, for example to evaluate database variables before the spreadsheet CALCs. This can be done with {PluginsOrder} in the Plugins section of configure.

Plugin-Specific Settings

Plugins are usually configured by variables accessible though the configure interface, but in some cases (usually older plugins) TWiki preferences are used. If a TWiki variable is defined in a Plugin topic e.g:

  • Set SETTING = Create dynamic foo bar reports
Then these settings can be retrieved as preferences variables like %<pluginname>_<var>%. For example, %RUBBERPLUGIN_SETTING% shows the value of SETTING in the RubberPlugin topic.

Listing Active Plugins

Plugin status variables let you list all active Plugins wherever needed.

This site is running TWiki version TWiki-4.2.0, Tue, 22 Jan 2008, build 16278, Plugin API version 1.2

%ACTIVATEDPLUGINS%

On this TWiki site, the enabled Plugins are: SpreadSheetPlugin, BlackListPlugin, BreadCrumbsPlugin, CommentPlugin, DpSyntaxHighlighterPlugin, EditHiddenTablePlugin, EditTablePlugin, FilterPlugin, FlexWebListPlugin, IfDefinedPlugin, ImgPlugin, InterwikiPlugin, JQueryPlugin, JQueryTwistyPlugin, NatSkinPlugin, RedDotPlugin, RenderListPlugin, SlideShowPlugin, SmartEditPlugin, SmiliesPlugin, TablePlugin, TinyMCEPlugin, TopicCreatePlugin, TreeBrowserPlugin, TreePlugin, TwistyPlugin, WysiwygPlugin.

%PLUGINDESCRIPTIONS%

  • SpreadSheetPlugin (any TWiki, $Rev: 16273 (22 Jan 2008) $): Add spreadsheet calculation like "$SUM( $ABOVE() )" to TWiki tables and other topic text
  • BlackListPlugin (2013-03-22, $Rev: 25492 (2013-03-22) $): Utility to keep malicious users away from a public TWiki site
  • BreadCrumbsPlugin (v2.01, $Rev: 0 (01 Sep 2008) $): A flexible way to display breadcrumbs navigation
  • CommentPlugin (TWiki-4, $Rev: 15776 (22 Jan 2008) $): Allows users to quickly post comments to a page without an edit/preview/save cycle
  • DpSyntaxHighlighterPlugin (1.5.2, $Rev: 16559 (12 Dec 2008) $): Client side syntax highlighting using the dp.SyntaxHighlighter
  • EditHiddenTablePlugin (Dakar, $Rev: 15561 (03 Jul 2008) $): Edit TWiki tables rows using a form
  • EditTablePlugin (4.7.10, $Rev: 16239 (22 Jan 2008) $): Edit TWiki tables using edit fields, date pickers and drop down boxes
  • EditTablerowPlugin: (disabled)
  • ExcelImportExportPlugin: (disabled)
  • FilterPlugin (1.51, $Rev: 16970 (03 Jul 2008) $): Substitute and extract information from content by using regular expressions
  • FlexWebListPlugin (v1.23, $Rev: 16971 (03 Jul 2008) $): Flexible way to display hierarchical weblists
  • IfDefinedPlugin (v1.02, $Rev: 16972 (03 Jul 2008) $): Render content conditionally
  • ImgPlugin (Dakar, $Rev: 10608$): Allows TWiki variable-style insertion of images in topics
  • InterwikiPlugin (Dakar, $Rev: 14913 (17 Sep 2007) $): Link ExternalSite:Page text to external sites based on aliases defined in a rules topic
  • JQueryPlugin (0.90, $Rev: 17031 (16 Jul 2008) $): jQuery JavaScript library for TWiki
  • JQueryTwistyPlugin (1.2, $Rev: 16736 (03 Jul 2008) $): Twisty section JavaScript library to open/close content dynamically
  • NatSkinPlugin (3.00-pre20, $Rev: 16978 (03 Jul 2008) $): Theming engine for NatSkin
  • PhotoarchivePlugin: (disabled)
  • PreferencesPlugin: (disabled)
  • RedDotPlugin (1.40, $Rev: 16137 (03 Jan 2008) $): Renders edit-links as little red dots
  • RenderListPlugin (2.0, $Rev: 16235 (22 Jan 2008) $): Render bullet lists in a variety of formats
  • SlideShowPlugin (Any TWiki, $Rev: 15091 (22 Jan 2008) $): Create web based presentations based on topics with headings.
  • SmartEditPlugin (Dakar, $Rev: 9598$): Provide SmartEditAddOn
  • SmiliesPlugin (Dakar, $Rev: 16049 (22 Jan 2008) $): Render smilies as icons, like smile for  :-) or eek! for  :eek:
  • TablePlugin (1.032, $Rev: 16182 (22 Jan 2008) $): Control attributes of tables and sorting of table columns
  • TinyMCEPlugin (03 Aug 2008, $Rev: 17303 (12 Dec 2008) $): Integration of TinyMCE? with WysiwygPlugin
  • TopicCreatePlugin (1.000): Automatically create a set of topics and attachments at topic save time
  • TreeBrowserPlugin (v1.8): Renders a list as a collapsable/expandable tree.
  • TreePlugin (1.7): Dynamic generation of TWiki topic trees
  • TwistyPlugin (1.4.9, $Rev: 15653 (19 Nov 2007) $): Twisty section JavaScript library to open/close content dynamically
  • WysiwygPlugin (03 Aug 2008, $Rev: 17720 (12 Dec 2008) $): Translator framework for Wysiwyg editors

%FAILEDPLUGINS%

PluginErrors
SpreadSheetPlugin none
BlackListPlugin none
BreadCrumbsPlugin none
CommentPlugin none
DpSyntaxHighlighterPlugin none
EditHiddenTablePlugin none
EditTablePlugin none
EditTablerowPlugin 
TWiki::Plugins::EditTablerowPlugin could not be loaded.  Errors were: 
Can't locate TWiki/JSCalendarContrib.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /var/www/twiki/lib . /usr/local/lib64/perl5 /usr/local/share/perl5 /usr/lib64/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/lib64/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 /var/www/twiki/lib/CPAN /var/www/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib//arch /var/www/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib//5.10.1/x86_64-linux-thread-multi /var/www/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib//5.10.1 /var/www/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib/) at /var/www/twiki/lib/TWiki/Plugins/EditTablerowPlugin.pm line 801.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /var/www/twiki/lib/TWiki/Plugins/EditTablerowPlugin.pm line 801.
Compilation failed in require at (eval 61) line 1.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 61) line 1.

----
ExcelImportExportPlugin 
TWiki::Plugins::ExcelImportExportPlugin could not be loaded.  Errors were: 
Can't locate TWiki/Plugins/ExcelImportExportPlugin.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /var/www/twiki/lib . /usr/local/lib64/perl5 /usr/local/share/perl5 /usr/lib64/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/lib64/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 /var/www/twiki/lib/CPAN /var/www/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib//arch /var/www/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib//5.10.1/x86_64-linux-thread-multi /var/www/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib//5.10.1 /var/www/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib/) at (eval 62) line 1.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 62) line 1.

----
FilterPlugin none
FlexWebListPlugin none
IfDefinedPlugin none
ImgPlugin none
InterwikiPlugin none
JQueryPlugin none
JQueryTwistyPlugin none
NatSkinPlugin none
PhotoarchivePlugin 
TWiki::Plugins::PhotoarchivePlugin::initPlugin did not return true (0)
PreferencesPlugin 
TWiki::Plugins::PreferencesPlugin could not be loaded.  Errors were: 
Can't locate TWiki/Plugins/PreferencesPlugin.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /var/www/twiki/lib . /usr/local/lib64/perl5 /usr/local/share/perl5 /usr/lib64/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/lib64/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 /var/www/twiki/lib/CPAN /var/www/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib//arch /var/www/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib//5.10.1/x86_64-linux-thread-multi /var/www/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib//5.10.1 /var/www/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib/) at (eval 90) line 1.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 90) line 1.

----
RedDotPlugin none
RenderListPlugin none
SlideShowPlugin none
SmartEditPlugin none
SmiliesPlugin none
TablePlugin none
TinyMCEPlugin none
TopicCreatePlugin none
TreeBrowserPlugin none
TreePlugin none
TwistyPlugin none
WysiwygPlugin none
HandlerPlugins
afterEditHandlerWysiwygPlugin
afterSaveHandlerTreePlugin
beforeAttachmentSaveHandlerBlackListPlugin
beforeCommonTagsHandlerSmartEditPlugin
WysiwygPlugin
beforeEditHandlerSmartEditPlugin
TinyMCEPlugin
WysiwygPlugin
beforeMergeHandlerWysiwygPlugin
beforeSaveHandlerBlackListPlugin
CommentPlugin
TopicCreatePlugin
WysiwygPlugin
commonTagsHandlerSpreadSheetPlugin
BlackListPlugin
CommentPlugin
DpSyntaxHighlighterPlugin
EditTablePlugin
FilterPlugin
IfDefinedPlugin
JQueryPlugin
NatSkinPlugin
RedDotPlugin
SlideShowPlugin
SmiliesPlugin
endRenderingHandlerBlackListPlugin
This handler is deprecated - please check for updated versions of the plugins that use it!
initPluginSpreadSheetPlugin
BlackListPlugin
BreadCrumbsPlugin
CommentPlugin
DpSyntaxHighlighterPlugin
EditHiddenTablePlugin
EditTablePlugin
FilterPlugin
FlexWebListPlugin
IfDefinedPlugin
ImgPlugin
InterwikiPlugin
JQueryPlugin
JQueryTwistyPlugin
NatSkinPlugin
RedDotPlugin
RenderListPlugin
SlideShowPlugin
SmartEditPlugin
SmiliesPlugin
TablePlugin
TinyMCEPlugin
TopicCreatePlugin
TreeBrowserPlugin
TreePlugin
TwistyPlugin
WysiwygPlugin
modifyHeaderHandlerWysiwygPlugin
postRenderingHandlerBlackListPlugin
EditTablePlugin
NatSkinPlugin
RedDotPlugin
WysiwygPlugin
preRenderingHandlerInterwikiPlugin
SmiliesPlugin
TablePlugin
TreeBrowserPlugin
redirectCgiQueryHandlerRedDotPlugin
startRenderingHandlerRenderListPlugin
WysiwygPlugin
This handler is deprecated - please check for updated versions of the plugins that use it!
31 plugins

The TWiki Plugin API

The Application Programming Interface (API) for TWiki Plugins provides the specifications for hooking into the core TWiki code from your external Perl Plugin module.

Available Core Functions

The TWikiFuncDotPm module (lib/TWiki/Func.pm) describes all the interfaces available to Plugins. Plugins should only use the interfaces described in this module.

ALERT! Note: If you use other core functions not described in Func.pm, you run the risk of creating security holes. Also, your Plugin will likely break and require updating when you upgrade to a new version of TWiki.

Predefined Hooks

In addition to TWiki core functions, Plugins can use predefined hooks, or callbacks, as described in the lib/TWiki/Plugins/EmptyPlugin.pm module.

  • All but the initPlugin are disabled. To enable a callback, remove DISABLE_ from the function name.

TWiki:Codev/StepByStepRenderingOrder helps you decide which rendering handler to use.

Hints on Writing Fast Plugins

  • Delay initialization as late as possible. For example, if your Plugin is a simple syntax processor, you might delay loading extra Perl modules until you actually see the syntax in the text.
    • For example, use an eval block like this:
      eval { require IPC::Run }
      return "<font color=\"red\">SamplePlugin: Can't load required modules ($@)</font>" if $@;
  • Keep the main plugin package as small as possible; create other packages that are loaded if and only if they are used. For example, create sub-packages of BathPlugin in lib/TWiki/Plugins/BathPlugin/.
  • Avoid using preferences in the plugin topic; set $NO_PREFS_IN_TOPIC if you possibly can, as that will stop TWiki from reading the plugin topic for every page. Use Config.spec instead.
  • Use registered tag handlers
  • Measure the performance to see the difference

Version Detection

To eliminate the incompatibility problems that are bound to arise from active open Plugin development, a Plugin versioning system is provided for automatic compatibility checking.

  • All plugin packages require a $VERSION variable. This should be an integer, or a subversion version id.

  • The initPlugin handler should check all dependencies and return 1 if the initialization is OK or 0 if something went wrong.
    • The Plugin initialization code does not register a Plugin that returns 0 (or that has no initPlugin handler).

  • $TWiki::Plugins::VERSION in the TWiki::Plugins module contains the TWiki Plugin API version, currently 1.2.
    • You can also use the %PLUGINVERSION{}% variable to query the Plugin API version or the version of installed Plugins.

Security

  • Badly written Plugins can open huge security holes in TWiki. This is especially true if care isn't taken to prevent execution of arbitrary commands on the server.
  • Don't allow sensitive configuration data to be edited by users. it is better to add sensitive configuration options to the %TWiki::cfg hash than adding it as preferences in the Plugin topic
  • Always use the TWiki::Sandbox to execute commands.
  • Always audit the Plugins you install, and make sure you are happy with the level of security provided. While every effort is made to monitor Plugin authors activities, at the end of the day they are uncontrolled user contributions.

Creating Plugins

With a reasonable knowledge of the Perl scripting language, you can create new Plugins or modify and extend existing ones. Basic plug-in architecture uses an Application Programming Interface (API), a set of software instructions that allow external code to interact with the main program. The TWiki Plugin API Plugins by providing a programming interface for TWiki.

Anatomy of a Plugin

A (very) basic TWiki Plugin consists of two files:

  • a Perl module, e.g. MyFirstPlugin.pm
  • a documentation topic, e.g. MyFirstPlugin.txt

The Perl module can be a block of code that talks to with TWiki alone, or it can include other elements, like other Perl modules (including other Plugins), graphics, TWiki templates, external applications (ex: a Java applet), or just about anything else it can call. In particular, files that should be web-accessible (graphics, Java applets ...) are best placed as attachments of the MyFirstPlugin topic. Other needed Perl code is best placed in a lib/TWiki/Plugins/MyFirstPlugin/ directory.

The Plugin API handles the details of connecting your Perl module with main TWiki code. When you're familiar with the Plugin API, you're ready to develop Plugins.

The TWiki::Plugins.BuildContrib module provides a lot of support for plugins development, including a plugin creator, automatic publishing support, and automatic installation script writer. If you plan on writing more than one plugin, you probably need it.

Creating the Perl Module

Copy file lib/TWiki/Plugins/EmptyPlugin.pm to <name>Plugin.pm. The EmptyPlugin.pm module contains mostly empty functions, so it does nothing, but it's ready to be used. Customize it. Refer to the Plugin API specs for more information.

If your Plugin uses its own modules and objects, you must include the name of the Plugin in the package name. For example, write Package MyFirstPlugin::Attrs; instead of just Package Attrs;. Then call it using: 

use TWiki::Plugins::MyFirstPlugin::Attrs;
$var = MyFirstPlugin::Attrs->new();

Writing the Documentation Topic

The Plugin documentation topic contains usage instructions and version details. It serves the Plugin files as FileAttachments for downloading. (The doc topic is also included in the distribution package.) To create a documentation topic:

  1. Copy the Plugin topic template from TWiki.org. To copy the text, go to TWiki:Plugins/PluginPackage and:
    • enter the Plugin name in the "How to Create a Plugin" section
    • click Create
    • select all in the Edit box & copy
    • Cancel the edit
    • go back to your site to the TWiki web
    • In the GoBox enter your Plugin name, for example MyFirstPlugin, press enter and create the new topic
    • paste & save new Plugin topic on your site
  2. Customize your Plugin topic.
    • Important: In case you plan to publish your Plugin on TWiki.org, use Interwiki names for author names and links to TWiki.org topics, such as TWiki:Main/TWikiGuest. This is important because links should work properly in a Plugin topic installed on any TWiki, not just on TWiki.org.
  3. Document the performance data you gathered while measuring the performance
  4. Save your topic, for use in packaging and publishing your Plugin.

OUTLINE: Doc Topic Contents
Check the Plugins web on TWiki.org for the latest Plugin doc topic template. Here's a quick overview of what's covered:

Syntax Rules: <Describe any special text formatting that will be rendered.>"

Example: <Include an example of the Plugin in action. Possibly include a static HTML version of the example to compare if the installation was a success!>"

Plugin Settings: <Description and settings for custom Plugin %VARIABLES%, and those required by TWiki.>"

  • Plugins Preferences <If user settings are needed, explain... Entering values works exactly like TWikiPreferences and WebPreferences: six (6) spaces and then:>"
    • Set <EXAMPLE = value added>

Plugin Installation Instructions: <Step-by-step set-up guide, user help, whatever it takes to install and run, goes here.>"

Plugin Info: <Version, credits, history, requirements - entered in a form, displayed as a table. Both are automatically generated when you create or edit a page in the TWiki:Plugins web.>"

Packaging for Distribution

The TWiki:Plugins.BuildContrib is a powerful build environment that is used by the TWiki project to build TWiki itself, as well as many of the Plugins. You don't have to use it, but it is highly recommended!

If you don't want (or can't) use the BuildContrib, then a minimum Plugin release consists of a Perl module with a WikiName that ends in Plugin, ex: MyFirstPlugin.pm, and a documentation page with the same name(MyFirstPlugin.txt).

  1. Distribute the Plugin files in a directory structure that mirrors TWiki. If your Plugin uses additional files, include them all:
    • lib/TWiki/Plugins/MyFirstPlugin.pm
    • data/TWiki/MyFirstPlugin.txt
    • pub/TWiki/MyFirstPlugin/uparrow.gif [a required graphic]
  2. Create a zip archive with the Plugin name (MyFirstPlugin.zip) and add the entire directory structure from Step 1. The archive should look like this:
    • lib/TWiki/Plugins/MyFirstPlugin.pm
    • data/TWiki/MyFirstPlugin.txt
    • pub/TWiki/MyFirstPlugin/uparrow.gif

Measuring and Improving the Plugin Performance

A high quality Plugin performs well. You can use the TWiki:Plugins.PluginBenchmarkAddOn to measure your TWiki:Plugins.PluginBenchmarks. The data is needed as part of the Documentation Topic.

See also Hints on Writing Fast Plugins.

Publishing for Public Use

You can release your tested, packaged Plugin to the TWiki community through the TWiki:Plugins web. All Plugins submitted to TWiki.org are available for download and further development in TWiki:Plugins/PluginPackage.

Publish your Plugin by following these steps:

  1. Post the Plugin documentation topic in the TWiki:Plugins/PluginPackage:
    • enter the Plugin name in the "How to Create a Plugin" section, for example MyFirstPlugin
    • paste in the topic text from Writing the Documentation Topic and save
  2. Attach the distribution zip file to the topic, ex: MyFirstPlugin.zip
  3. Link from the doc page to a new, blank page named after the Plugin, and ending in Dev, ex: MyFirstPluginDev. This is the discussion page for future development. (User support for Plugins is handled in TWiki:Support.)
  4. Put the Plugin into the SVN repository, see TWiki:Plugins/ReadmeFirst (optional)

NEW Once you have done the above steps once, you can use the BuildContrib to upload updates to your Plugin.

Thank you very much for sharing your Plugin with the TWiki community smile

Recommended Storage of Plugin Specific Data

Plugins sometimes need to store data. This can be Plugin internal data such as cache data, or data generated for browser consumption such as images. Plugins should store data using TWikiFuncDotPm functions that support saving and loading of topics and attachments.

Plugin Internal Data

You can create a Plugin "work area" using the TWiki::Func::getWorkArea() function, which gives you a persistent directory where you can store data files. By default they will not be web accessible. The directory is guaranteed to exist, and to be writable by the webserver user. For convenience, TWiki::Func::storeFile() and TWiki::Func::readFile() are provided to persistently store and retrieve simple data in this area.

Web Accessible Data

Topic-specific data such as generated images can be stored in the topic's attachment area, which is web accessible. Use the TWiki::Func::saveAttachment() function to store the data.

Recommendation for file name:

  • Prefix the filename with an underscore (the leading underscore avoids a name clash with files attached to the same topic)
  • Identify where the attachment originated from, typically by including the Plugin name in the file name
  • Use only alphanumeric characters, underscores, dashes and periods to avoid platform dependency issues and URL issues
  • Example: _FooBarPlugin_img123.gif

Web specific data can be stored in the Plugin's attachment area, which is web accessible. Use the TWiki::Func::saveAttachment() function to store the data.

Recommendation for file names in Plugin attachment area:

  • Prefix the filename with an underscore
  • Include the name of the web in the filename
  • Use only alphanumeric characters, underscores, dashes and periods to avoid platform dependency issues and URL issues
  • Example: _Main_roundedge-ul.gif

Integrating with configure

Some TWiki extensions have setup requirements that are best integrated into configure rather than trying to use TWiki preferences variables. These extensions use Config.spec files to publish their configuration requirements.

Config.spec files are read during TWiki configuration. Once a Config.spec has defined a configuration item, it is available for edit through the standard configure interface. Config.spec files are stored in the 'plugin directory' e.g. lib/TWiki/Plugins/BathPlugin/Config.spec.

Structure of a Config.spec file

The Config.spec file for a plugin starts with the plugin announcing what it is: 
# ---+ BathPlugin
# This plugin senses the level of water in your bath, and ensures the plug
# is not removed while the water is still warm.
This is followed by one or more configuration items. Each configuration item has a type, a description and a default. For example: 
# **SELECT Plastic,Rubber,Metal**
# Select the plug type
$TWiki::cfg{BathPlugin}{PlugType} = 'Plastic';

# **NUMBER**
# Enter the chain length in cm
$TWiki::cfg{BathPlugin}{ChainLength} = '30';

# **BOOLEAN EXPERT**
# Turn this option off to disable the water temperature alarm
$TWiki::cfg{BathPlugin}{TempSensorEnabled} = '1';
The type (e.g. **SELECT** ) tells configure to how to prompt for the value. It also tells configure how to do some basic checking on the value you actually enter. All the comments between the type and the configuration item are taken as part of the description. The configuration item itself defines the default value for the configuration item. The above spec defines the configuration items $TWiki::cfg{BathPlugin}{PlugType}, $TWiki::cfg{BathPlugin}{ChainLength}, and $TWiki::cfg{BathPlugin}{TempSensorEnabled} for use in your plugin. For example, 
if( $TWiki::cfg{BathPlugin}{TempSensorEnabled} && $curTemperature > 50 ) {
    die "The bathwater is too hot for comfort";
}

The config.spec file is read by configure, and configure then writes LocalSite.cfg with the values chosen by the local site admin.

A range of types are available for use in Config.spec files:

BOOLEAN A true/false value, represented as a checkbox
COMMAND length A shell command
LANGUAGE A language (selected from {LocalesDir}
NUMBER A number
OCTAL An octal number
PASSWORD length A password (input is hidden)
PATH length A file path
PERL A perl structure, consisting of arrays and hashes
REGEX length A perl regular expression
SELECT choices Pick one of a range of choices
SELECTCLASS root Select a perl package (class)
STRING length A string
URL length A url
URLPATH length A relative URL path

All types can be followed by a comma-separated list of attributes.

EXPERT means this an expert option
M means the setting is mandatory (may not be empty)
H means the option is not visible in configure

See lib/TWiki.spec for many more examples.

Config.spec files are also used for other (non-plugin) extensions. in this case they are stored under the Contrib directory instead of the Plugins directory.

Maintaining Plugins

Discussions and Feedback on Plugins

Each published Plugin has a Plugin development topic on TWiki.org. Plugin development topics are named after your Plugin and end in Dev, such as MyFirstPluginDev. The Plugin development topic is a great resource to discuss feature enhancements and to get feedback from the TWiki community.

Maintaining Compatibility with Earlier TWiki Versions

The Plugin interface (TWikiFuncDotPm functions and handlers) evolve over time. TWiki 4.0 introduced new API functions to address the needs of Plugin authors. It also deprecated some functions. Some Plugins written for earlier TWiki releases using unofficial TWiki internal functions no longer work on the TWiki 4.0 codebase. All this means that some Plugins need to be updated to work on the TWiki 4.0 codebase.

Organizations typically do not upgrade to the latest TWiki for many months. However, many administrators still would like to install the latest versions of a Plugin on their older TWiki installation. This need is fulfilled if Plugins are maintained in a compatible manner.

TIP Tip: Plugins can be written to be compatible with older and newer TWiki releases. This can be done also for Plugins using unofficial TWiki internal functions of an earlier release that no longer work on the latest TWiki codebase. TWiki:TWiki.TWikiPluginsSupplement#MaintainPlugins has more.

Handling deprecated functions

From time-to-time, the TWiki developers will add new functions to the interface (either to TWikiFuncDotPm, or new handlers). Sometimes these improvements mean that old functions have to be deprecated to keep the code manageable. When this happens, the deprecated functions will be supported in the interface for at least one more TWiki release, and probably longer, though this cannot be guaranteed.

When a plugin defines deprecated handlers, a warning will be shown in the list generated by %FAILEDPLUGINS%. Admins who see these warnings should check TWiki.org and if necessary, contact the plugin author, for an updated version of the plugin.

Updated plugins may still need to define deprecated handlers for compatibility with old TWiki versions. In this case, the plugin package that defines old handlers can suppress the warnings in %FAILEDPLUGINS%.

This is done by defining a map from the handler name to the TWiki::Plugins version in which the handler was first deprecated. For example, if we need to define the endRenderingHandler for compatibility with TWiki::Plugins versions before 1.1, we would add this to the plugin: 

package TWiki::Plugins::SinkPlugin;
use vars qw( %TWikiCompatibility );
$TWikiCompatibility{endRenderingHandler} = 1.1;
If the currently-running TWiki version is 1.1 or later, then the handler will not be called and the warning will not be issued. TWiki with versions of TWiki::Plugins before 1.1 will still call the handler as required.

Warning: Can't find topic TWiki/.TWikiNotificationOfChanges

Warning: Can't find topic TWiki/.RenameTopic

Warning: Can't find topic TWiki/.TWikiAdministration

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Topic revision: r28 - 01 Sep 2001 - 16:07:08 - MikeMannix?
 
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