Sphene Community Tools

Cruising through the code I noticed a News Macro, but couldn't find any documentation as to how exactly it works? I haven't figured out exactly how the macros work at all -- how they're parsed, where they're called from, etc; so I'm kinda lost. However, I noticed that it does work great on this site, and I think it's an awesome feature - it's an easy way to make wiki pages into blogs (with comments!), for example. I'd really love to understand how all this works, could you explain it to me?

Thanks!

i can give you a short usage guide now ;) .. if you need a deeper introduction you'll have to wait until i'm @home and have time ..

in a wiki snip enter: {news category=5 baseURL=/board}

category is the ID of the category you see in the URL ..

i'm currently not that happy with the macro system.. it's not very extensible yet..

ok.. what i probably should have mentioned.. the news macro includes the threads from a forum category :)
all replies are then more or less "comments" .. so i guess.. yes.. you could use it as simple blog with comments.. (it's than actually just a board)

in addition to 'category' and 'baseURL' it supports the parameters:
- 'limit' - which defines how many threads should be displayed.. (by default.. this is 5 .. and that's the way i'm using it on this page..)
- 'templateName' - a django template which is used to render the threads... (by default: wiki/news.html)

since i obviously don't provide an example template.. here is the one i'm using:

{% load sph_extras %}

<ul class="news">
  {% for thread in threads %}
    <li>
      <div class="subject">{{ thread.postdate|sph_date }}: {{ thread.subject }}</div>
      <div class="body">{{ thread.body_escaped }}</div>
      {% if baseURL %}
        <div class="comments"><a href="{{ baseURL }}/thread/{{ thread.id }}/">{{ thread.replyCount }} Comments</a></div>
      {% endif %}
    </li>
  {% endfor %}
</ul>

btw. i've now written a short documentation about the 3 macros which currently exist:

http://sct.sphene.net/wiki/show/Wiki/