doc/Templates.txt

TEMPLATES
=========

JSPWiki v2 now supports the concept of "templates" and "skins".  These
are actually two different things:

  *Templates* are set by the site administrator.  They are a core set
  of HTML and JSP files, that define how your site looks.  All
  templates are located in the JSPWiki/templates/<template name>
  directory.

  *Skins* are modifications on the basic templates.  Each template may
  have one or many skins available, and these are chosen by the user.
  These are based on stylesheets, and some templates might not support
  any skins at all.

JSPWiki comes currently with a single template, called "default".
This is also the template that gets used if no template has been
defined.  Unfortunately, the default template has only one "skin".


Rolling your own
================

To make your own template, just make an another subdirectory in
"templates", copy all the files from the "default" -template, and
modify them at your will.

To specify which template your site should use, just change the
definition of "jspwiki.templateDir" in jspwiki.properties.


More details
============

OK, here's how it works:

Main JSP pages: Wiki.jsp, Edit.jsp, Preview.jsp, PageInfo.jsp, etc.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

JSPWiki has a bunch of main JSP pages.  These work as the "Controller"
- they basically control the processing of the request.  They take
care of saving your document, or making sure that there are no
concurrent changes, etc.  You can modify these files, if you want -
they're written as JSP pages to make your modifications easier.
However, when you upgrade to a new JSPWiki version, you'll need to
modify these pages again.

The main JSP pages will then figure out which template to use, and
will include the appropriate template file, which decides what the
"View" is going to be like.

There are two basic templates: ViewTemplate and EditTemplate.
ViewTemplate gets all requests from any page that does not have to
care about changing the page contents, and EditTemplate gets all those
requests that do.

Each template MUST have both of these files, or else there will be
trouble.


View pages: ViewTemplate.jsp, EditTemplate.jsp
----------------------------------------------

ViewTemplate.jsp gets all requests from Wiki.jsp, Preview.jsp,
PageInfo.jsp, etc.  Modify this file to change the visual outlook of
your Wiki site, as your average browsing user would see it.

EditTemplate.jsp on the other hand gets all Edit.jsp requests.  Modify
this file so that people who edit it get to see stuff.


OK.  But we still have a problem: Displaying Page Info is totally
different from showing the rendered text - yes?  The other one has
plenty of lists and items, and the other one has nice HTML text.  But
they are both handled by ViewTemplate.jsp!

Here's where it gets complicated:  The "default" template handles this
by including different content files depending on the Page Request
Context.  The Page Request Context basically tells you whether you're
asking for "info", or "diff", or whatever.  The default template uses
the CheckRequestContext tag to see which context you're in at the moment,
and includes then a proper "Content" -file.

For example, in an excerpt from the default template:

      <wiki:CheckRequestContext context="view">
         <wiki:Include page="PageContent.jsp" />
      </wiki:CheckRequestContext>

This basically means that "if the request context is 'view',
i.e. someone just wanted to see the rendered HTML content, then
include a JSP page called 'PageContent.jsp'".  The PageContent.jsp
then just basically says that:

      <wiki:InsertPage />

      <wiki:NoSuchPage>
           This page does not exist.  Why don't you go and
           <wiki:EditLink>create it</wiki:EditLink>?
      </wiki:NoSuchPage>

That is: "insert the page content in HTML.  If there is no such page,
display a simple note to the user, requesting him to fix this."

So, it's not that difficult.  Take a look at "ViewTemplate.jsp" to see
what kind of different request contexts there are, and how to handle
them.



"Content" pages
---------------

These are the different "content" pages that are included by
"ViewTemplate.jsp".  For example, "PageContent.jsp" displays HTML,
"DiffContent.jsp" displays the diff, etc.  You can just easily reuse
these, or do something else.


Explanation of the different tags
=================================

JSPWiki templates are heavily based on JSP tags.  An explanation on
them will be shortly coming, but in the mean time, just run "ant
javadoc" and see what kind of stuff appears in "docs/".

You could alternatively just look at the default template, since it
basically uses all of the tags.  They're not that hard to figure out.