User talk:The Transhumanist/ViewAsOutline-CategoryTree.js


 * This script is operational: its main features work; it is under further development

The purpose of this script is to make it easy to copy/paste portions of the Category tree into a list or outline article that you are editing. The CatTree expand menu item expands every branch of the tree (it's like clicking on them all at once). When you click CT wikicodify, list item wikiformatting is provided right on the screen, so you don't have to type it in after you copy and paste.

= Script's workshop =
 * This is the work area for developing the script and its documentation. The talk page portion of this page starts at, below.

Description / instruction manual

 * This script is operational: its main features work; it is under further development

The purpose of this script is to make it easy to copy/paste portions of the Category tree into a list or outline article that you are editing. The CatTree expand menu item expands every branch of the tree (it's like clicking on them all at once). When you click CT wikicodify, list item wikiformatting is provided right on the screen, so you don't have to type it in after you copy and paste.

When completed, this script will provide 4 menu items to affect a displayed category tree: one for expanding, one for collapsing, one for turning wikicodification on, and another for turning wikicodification off. Wikicodification means adding the heading delimiters and list item wikicoding that you would see in an editor (even though we're not in an editor), for easy copying/pasting into an editor.

Currently, expanding and the bullet/link formatting feature work. Very useful for copying/pasting linked list items. Eventually, it will also provide heading formatting.

When you are on the CategoryTree page, it provides 4 menu items in the sidebar:


 * CatTree expand
 * CatTree collapse
 * CT wikicodify
 * CT dewikicodify

The script is useful for when you have mode set to "pages except files" or "all pages".

After selecting the mode, you expand the tree to show more of it. To help speed that up, the "CatTree expand" menu item expands all the categories in the tree at the same time, one level each time you click it. Click on the triangles in the tree for fine-tuned control.

Once you are done expanding the tree to the way you want it, click on "CT Wikicodify".

That adds link formatting to the links for easy copying/pasting into outlines.

Don't hit CT wikicodify until you are ready to prepare the links for copying/pasting, because further expanding doesn't work after you do (a bug).

Then you copy/paste links to your heart's content. :)

Very useful for working on outlines, such as city outlines.

Just put the name of the city in the category box, select pages except files or all pages under mode, and then press Show tree. Then expand the tree, and when you are ready, click CT wikicodify.

General approach
The main trick is adding spans to the HTML using regex. Inside those spans are the wikicode for links. The spans are classed to enable use of .hide and .show.

Change log

 * 2017/12/13 - Started script
 * 2017/12/13 - Added menu item to expand unexpanded categories
 * 2017/12/13 - Added menu item to collapse expanded categories
 * This does it all-at-once, rather than one-level at a time like the expand menu item does
 * 2017/12/13 - Added CT Wikicodify menu item (empty - not operational)
 * 2017/12/13 - Added CT Dewikicodify menu item (empty - not operational)
 * 2017/12/15 - Added functionality to CT Dewikicodify (hides the inserted wikicodes)
 * 2017/12/16 - Added partial functionality to CT Wikicodify (adds wikicodes without differentiating entries that already have them)
 * 2017/12/16 - Now differentiates entries that have the link brackets, by inserting the class "Brackets" at the same time. But, now interactive use of expanding and collapsing doesn't work after wikicodification. You can get it the way you want it, and then wikicodify, but then you have to start over (reload current page) if you want to change which categories are expanded or collapsed.

Task list

 * add class to appearing categories, based on the highest heading-level class present (counter?), to facilitate wikicodification

Bug reports

 * 2017/12/16 - CT Wikicodify adds bullet and brackets to entries that it already added a bullet and brackets to.
 * 2017/12/16 - Expand and collapse stop working after CT Wikicodify is clicked.

Desired/Completed features
Completed features are marked as ✅


 * Menu item that expands tree ✅
 * Menu item that collapses tree ✅
 * Menu item to wikicodify the currently displaying tree
 * Add (spanned & classed) wikicode heading delimiters based on class
 * Add (spanned & classed) list item formatting = bullet and link delimiters (double square brackets) ✅
 * Menu item to turn wikicodification off (bullets and link brackets only) ✅

Rough rough talk-through
Here, I "talk-through" the design, in order to help program it. This comes one step before pseudocoding...

Each time the expander is activated, new page names appear.

When CT wikicodify is clicked, those need to be modified without modifying the pre-existing ones, though the existing ones need to be shown if hidden. Inserting an additional class name does the trick, but also makes it so that no further expanding or collapsing can take place.

Script dependencies
= Discussions =

Adding wikicode to CategoryTree display
In StripSearchSorted.js we added bullets and double square brackets for copying linked items straight off the page for pasting into an editor.

Now I've started ViewAsOutline-CategoryTree.js to do that in the Special:CategoryTree utility. But, the display starts out collapsed, with very few article names showing. Clicking on each category to expand them is very tedious, so I included a menu item to expand all of the categories at the same time (one level at a time) and another to collapse them (so far, all at once). There is also a menu item for adding wikilink formatting, and another to hide it.

The problem I've run into is, once you click on the Wikicodify menu item, further expanding and collapsing do not work. If you get the categories you want showing before you Wikicodify, you're fine. But if you don't, you have to reload the page and start all over again.

I think it has something to do with the "Brackets" class I added in this version. I stuck that class in there so that Wikicodify wouldn't match the entries that it already inserted link formatting into, so that it wouldn't insert it again. I was expecting to be able to further expand the category tree after the insert operation, but unexpectedly nothing happens when you click on the expand or collapse menu items after that.

When you have time, please take a look under the hood, and let me know what you make of it.

To help get the gist of the program, user instructions are posted at User_talk:The_Transhumanist/ViewAsOutline-CategoryTree.js

The Transhumanist 17:40, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
 * The category tree page works through javascript. You can see the source code here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/ECTR/browse/master/modules/ext.categoryTree.js
 * I've only taken a quick look, but I'd say the problem is with the ... line. Rewriting the &lt;a&gt; tags is definitely not something the categoryTree.js expects. You might want to try only modifying the text within the  &lt;a&gt; tags, and not the tags themselves. Or only adding stuff before and after the tags (i.e. with jQuery methods) and not rewriting the tags using regex. - Evad37 &#91;talk] 15:07, 1 January 2018 (UTC)