Module:Wikitext Parsing/doc

This is the documentation page for Module:Wikitext Parsing

This Lua module is used on many pages and changes may be widely noticed. Test changes in the module's /sandbox or /testcases subpages, or in your own module sandbox. Consider discussing changes on the talk page before implementing them.

This module provides some functions to help with the rare processing error involved in modules like Module:Transcluder's getParameters() or Module:Template parameter value, which intend to parse the raw wikitext of a page. This module is not to be used in #invoke: calls, as there's no use in doing so. All text will be handled by MediaWiki before reaching the module anyways, and there will likely be no meaningful output.

PrepareText

This module is rated as ready for general use. It has reached a mature form and is thought to be relatively bug-free and ready for use wherever appropriate. It is ready to mention on help pages and other Wikipedia resources as an option for new users to learn. To reduce server load and bad output, it should be improved by sandbox testing rather than repeated trial-and-error editing.

PrepareText(text, keepComments) will run any content within certain tags that disable processing (<nowiki>, <pre>, <syntaxhighlight>, <source>, <math>) through mw.text.nowiki and remove HTML comments to avoid irrelevant text being processed by modules, allowing tricky syntax to be parsed through more basic means such as %b{}.

If the second parameter, keepComments, is set to true, the content of HTML comments will be passed through mw.text.nowiki instead of being removing entirely.

Any code using this function directly should consider using mw.text.decode to correct their output at the end, though this will also decode any input that was encoded but not inside a no-processing tag, which likely isn't a significant issue but still something worth considering.

ParseTemplates

This module is rated as beta, and is ready for widespread use. It is still new and should be used with some caution to ensure the results are as expected.

ParseTemplates(InputText, dontEscape) will attempt to parse all {{Templates}} on a page, handling multiple factors such as [[Wikilinks]] and {{{Variables}}} among other complex syntax. Due to the complexity of the function, it is considerably slow, and should be used carefully. The function returns a list of template objects in chronological order, which have the following properties:

Args: A key-value set of arguments, not in chronological order
ArgOrder: A list of keys in the chronological order they appear in the template
Children: A list of template objects in chronological order that are contained within the existing template. Only immediate children are listed
Name: The name of the template
Text: The raw text of the template

If the second parameter, dontEscape, is set to true, the inputted text won't be ran through the PrepareText function.