Module:category tree/documentation

This module is used for generating category boilerplate templates. It is not meant to be used directly. Rather, each template will have its own submodule, which handles the specifics of that template.

This documentation only covers the generics of the category tree system. If you are looking for documentation on a specific template, or on how to add or modify category information, see the documentation of that template.

Consider using poscatboiler handlers instead.

If you are considering creating a new category tree submodule, you may find it easier to instead add a poscatboiler handler. Generally, much less code is required, and there is no need to modify Module:auto cat to recognize the categories in question. See Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/documentation for more info. For examples, see e.g. the handlers in Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/terms by etymology that handle categories of the form LANG terms coined by COINER and LANG terms with POS1 and POS2 etymologies.

Parameters

The category tree module is invoked as:

{{#invoke:category tree|show|template=name of the template|...other parameters...}}

Every template that uses this module should have a submodule of this module with the name given in the |template= parameter. At present, only three such templates exist:

{{poscatboiler}} uses Module:category tree/poscatboiler
{{topic cat}} uses Module:category tree/topic cat
{{ws topic cat}} uses Module:category tree/ws topic cat

The submodule should export a function named new which takes a single parameter: a table named info that contains the various parameters that were passed to the template initially. This function should return a new Category object representing those parameters, or nil if the combination of parameters was not valid (i.e. no such category exists).

General workings

The module is based on the principle of two main kinds of category:

Basic categories belong to a specific language (or similar) and are the "regular" categories. Examples are: Category:English nouns, Category:French templates, Category:nl:Linguistics, Category:English terms derived from Japanese, Category:Latin script characters.

Umbrella categories do not have a code, but contain all basic categories of their label, one for each code. These are the "by language" type categories. Examples are: Category:Nouns by language, Category:Templates by language, Category:Linguistics, Category:Terms derived from Japanese, Category:Characters by script.

Some templates also distinguish a third type of category, the fundamental category. This category is used as the parent category for umbrella categories.

Category objects

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Category objects are returned by each submodule's new function. They represent a single category in the tree. A category object has a variety of methods which may be called on it to ask for information about the category.

getBreadcrumbName

getBreadcrumbName()

Returns the name that is used for the category in the "breadcrumbs" at the top of the category page.

getDataModule

getDataModule()

Returns the name of the module which contains the data for this category. This is used to create an "edit" link on the category, which allows users to find and edit the information more easily.

canBeEmpty

canBeEmpty()

Returns true either if the category contains pages but might be empty or if the category only contains categories, otherwise returns false.

getCategoryName

getCategoryName()

Returns the name of the category that this category object represents.

getDescription

getDescription()

Returns the description text that is shown at the top of the category page. If the category has no description, this returns nil.

getParents

getParents()

Returns a table of the parent categories of this category. Each element in the table is a table itself, with two elements:

.name: One of two possibilities: An category object representing the parent category, or a string that directly specifies the name of the parent category.
.sort: The sorting key that should be used when categorizing the current category in the parent.

If the category has no parents, this returns nil.

If there are two or more parent categories, the first will be used to generate the breadcrumbs that are displayed at the top of the category page. For example, Category:English language is in numerous categories (All languages, West Germanic languages, Latin script languages, Braille script languages, and so on), but the first category, All languages, is the one displayed in the breadcrumbs: සැකිල්ල:serif.

getChildren

getChildren()

Returns a table of the child categories of this category. Each element in the table is a category object representing the child category. If the category has no children, this returns nil.

getUmbrella

getUmbrella()

Returns a category object for the current category's corresponding umbrella category. If the current category is already an umbrella category, this returns nil. It also returns nil if the category has no umbrella category.

getAppendix

getAppendix()

Returns an appendix link (such as Appendix:French verbs) if the page exists, else returns nil.

getTOCTemplateName

getTOCTemplateName()

Returns the title for a template used as table of contents with the namespace prefix.

The table of contents is designed for categories with terms in a certain language, The TOC template should be a small, one-line template; a larger template will be used if available with the suffix /full. For example, if getTOCTemplateName() returns Template:en-categoryTOC, {{en-categoryTOC}} will be used as the small table of contents template (for categories with more than 200 but less than 2500 entries) and {{en-categoryTOC/full}} as the full table of contents template (for categories with more than 2500 entries).

If the function returns nil, no such template will be used.