TWiki Master Template

All common parts are defined in a master template, twiki.tmpl, that all other templates use.

Template variable:	Defines:
%TMPL:DEF{"sep"}%	"|" separator
%TMPL:DEF{"htmldoctype"}%	Start of all HTML pages
%TMPL:DEF{"standardheader"}%	Standard header (ex: view, index, seach)
%TMPL:DEF{"simpleheader"}%	Simple header with reduced links (ex: edit, attach, oops)
%TMPL:DEF{"standardfooter"}%	Footer, excluding revision and copyright parts
%TMPL:DEF{"oops"}%	Skeleton of oops dialog

Types of Template

• HTML Page Templates: Defines layout of TWiki pages
• Template Topics: Defines default text when you create a new topic

HTML Page Templates

TWiki uses HTML template files for all actions like topic view, edit, preview and so on. This allows you to change the look and feel of all pages by editing just some template files.

The template files are in the twiki/templates directory. As an example, twiki/templates/view.tmpl is the template file for the twiki/bin/view script. Templates can be overloaded per web. The following search order applies:

1. twiki/templates/$webName/$scriptName.tmpl
2. twiki/templates/$scriptName.tmpl

Note: $webName is the name of the web ( i.e. Main ), and $scriptName is the script ( i.e. view ).

Note: TWikiSkins can be defined to overload the standard templates.

Some special variables are used in templates ( especially view ) to show meta data - see Meta Data Rendering

Template Topics

Template topics define the default text for new topics. There are three types of template topics:

Topic Name:	What it is:
WebTopicViewTemplate	Help text shown when you view a non existing topic.
WebTopicNonWikiTemplate	Help text shown when you view a non existing topic that has not a WikiName.
WebTopicEditTemplate	Default text shown when you create a new topic.

1. The topic name specified by the templatetopic parameter.
2. WebTopicEditTemplate in the current web.
3. WebTopicEditTemplate in the TWiki web.

Template Topics in Action

Here is an example for creating new topics based on a specific template topic:

Above form asks for a topic name. A hidden input tag of name "templatetopic" specifies the ExampleTopicTemplate as the template topic. Here is the HTML source of the form:

<form name="new" action="%SCRIPTURLPATH%/edit%SCRIPTSUFFIX%/%WEB%/">
	* New example topic: 
	  <input type="text" name="topic" value="ExampleTopic%SERVERTIME{$year$mo$day}%" size="22">
	  <input type="hidden" name="templatetopic" value="ExampleTopicTemplate">
	  <input type="hidden" name="onlywikiname" value="on">
	  <input type="submit" value="Create"> (date format is YYYYMMDD)
</form>

The "onlywikiname" parameter enforces WikiWords for topic names.

Note: Use can use the %WIKIUSERNAME% and %DATE% variables in your topic templates as the signature; those variables are expanded when a new topic is created. The standard topic signature is:
-- %WIKIUSERNAME% - %DATE%

Templates by Example