IfDefinedPlugin

Description

This plugin adds a couple of tags that allow to render content conditionally. There are two different ways to do that: either by using the inline %IFDEFINED{"string" then="..." else="..."}% tag that returns the then or else argument depending on the string being defined, that is non-empty. There are no other ways to decide the condition but rendering the test string being a TopicMarkup expression, for example by embedding a %CALC{}% expression. This simplifies this plugin alot and allows a rather flexible way to generate the condition.

The other way is to use blocks of content surrounded by expressions like this:

%IFDEFINEDTHEN{"test"}%
...
%ELSIFDEFINED{"test"}%
...
%ELSEDEFINED%
...
%FIDEFINED%

This way the conditioned content is not limited to fit into a the argument position of a %IFDEFINED{...}% expression. Blocks can be nested and are evaluated starting from the outside, contrary to standard TopicMarkup being evaluated left-to-right-inside-out.

Related work

An %IF conditional is part of Foswiki as well. See Foswiki:System.IfStatements. The main differences between IF and IFDEFINED are

1. IF comes with a fullfledged boolean expression parser whereas IFDEFINED only checks if a test expression expands to a non-empty string.
2. This plugin comes with separate conditionals IFEXISTS and IFACCESS to implement some of the most commonly used tests in WikiApplications
3. IFDEFINED's sister IFDEFINEDTHEN also provides a section-oriented conditional
4. IFDEFINED comes with a "glue" feature to remov whitesapce before and after the conditional statement (can be switched off optionally)

Syntax Rules

IFDEFINED

Syntax:

%IFDEFINED{"test" 
  [action="view,edit,preview,..."]? 
  [as="..."]
  then="..." 
  else="..." 
  glue="on,off"}%

returns the "then or "else" content depending on the "test" expression expanding to the emtpy string or matching the string given in "as". Optionally the current topic action is checked to match the one given in "action". Normally, all surrounding whitespaces are removed, that is the resulting content is glued together in a way. You may switch that off by setting "glue" to "off" thus preventing all whitespace as it is.

The "then" and "else" strings may contain the following pseudo-variables:

• $n: substituted with a newline character (\n)
• $percnt: substituted with a percent character (%)
• $dollar: substituted with a dollar character ($)
• $test or $variable: substituted with the "test" string
• $value: substituted with the "as" string

IFDEFINEDTHEN, ELSIFDEFINED, ELSEDEFINED, FIDEFINED

Syntax:

%IFDEFINEDTHEN{"test" [action="view,edit,preview,..."]?}% 
  <then content> 
[%ELSIFDEFINED{...}% 
  <elsif content>]* 
[%ELSEDEFINED%
  <else content>]?
%FIDEFINED%

This is the multi-line version of IFSDEFINED. IFDEFINEDTHEN expressions can be nested safely. Within a single IFDEFINEDTHEN the ELSIFDEFINED parts can be repeated arbitrarily. Before rendering the <then|elsif|else condition> any $nop string will be removed first. Thereby nested TopicMarkup expressions can be prevented from being expanded in advance.

IFACCESS

Syntax:

%IFACCESS%

%IFACCESS{"<webtopic>" 
  [type="view|change"] 
  [user="<WikiName>"] 
  [then="<then-clause>"] 
  [else="<else-clause>"] 
  [glue="on|off"]}%

This checks the access permissions a user has on a given topic and then renders the <then-clause> if access is granted and lt;else-clause> otherwise. By default, the current user's view access will be checked on the current topic (%IFACCESS%). The other parameters are:

• <webtopic>: the name of the topic to be checked, defaults to current
• user="<WikiName>": the name of the user to be checked, defaults to the current user
• type="view|change": the type of access to be checked, either view access or change/edit access, defaults to "view"
• then="<then-clause>": the string to be returned on granted access, defaults to "1"
• else="<else-clause>": the string to be returned if no access is granted, defaults to "0"
• glue="on|off": apply glue around the IFACCESS tag or not, defaults to "on"

IFEXISTS

Syntax:

%IFEXISTS{"<webtopic>"
  [then="<then-clause>"] 
  [else="<else-clause>"] 
  [glue="on|off"]}%

This tag checks if webtopic exists and expands then-clause or else-clause as needed. A similar functionality is available using %CALC{"$IF($EXIST(<webtopic>,<then-clause>),<else-clause>)"}% of the SpreadSheetPlugin. This is still preferable if you need more computation based on CALC in the then/else branches. The IFEXISTS version however is more lightweigted, comes with a much simpler syntax and allows more complex TopicMarkup in the then/else branches.

Demo

• Set FOO = foo
• FOO is defined.
• FOO is not defined as "bar".
• BAR is not defined.
• WikiGuest has no write access to IfDefinedPlugin
• WikiGuest has no write access to IfDefinedPlugin

Plugin Installation Instructions

You do not need to install anything in the browser to use this extension. The following instructions are for the administrator who installs the extension on the server.

Open configure, and open the "Extensions" section. Use "Find More Extensions" to get a list of available extensions. Select "Install".

If you have any problems, or if the extension isn't available in configure, then you can still install manually from the command-line. See http://foswiki.org/Support/ManuallyInstallingExtensions for more help.

Plugin Info

Change History:
28 Aug 2014:	make sure the plugin is still releasable
26 Aug 2011:	use getCgiQuery instead of getRequestObject for backwards compatibility
23 Apr 2009:	converted to foswiki plugin
07 Jan 2009:	certified for foswiki/compat
03 Jul 2008:	more rookie perl errors
05 Oct 2007:	fixed a rookie perl error
20 Jun 2007:	added IFEXISTS ; make use of TWiki-4 APIs for speed improvements
18 Dec 2006:	removed support for cairo and beijing; added IFACCESS tag: checks access of some user on a topic
18 Sep 2006:	allow multinline values to be checked
31 Aug 2006:	added NO_PREFS_IN_TOPIC
15 Aug 2006:	added $test and $value
07 Aug 2006:	be smarter to detect the cgi action wrt to different apache setups
10 Mar 2006:	added as parameter; added escape parameters and recursive variable expansion to the condition argument which helps to circumvent problems due to different plugin orders
21 Feb 2006:	Initial version
Feedback:	Foswiki:Support/IfDefinedPlugin