NAME
CGI::Kwiki - A Quickie Wiki that's not too Tricky
SYNOPSIS
> mkdir cgi-bin/my-kwiki
> cd cgi-bin/my-kwiki
> kwiki-install
Kwiki software installed! Point your browser at this location.
KWIK START
The Offficial Kwiki Home is at http://www.kwiki.org. This site is a
Kwiki itself. It contains much more information about Kwiki than the
distributed docs.
DESCRIPTION
A Wiki is a website that allows its users to add pages, and edit any
existing pages. It is one of the most popular forms of web
collaboration. If you are new to wiki, visit
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WelcomeVisitors which is possibly the oldest
wiki, and has lots of information about how wikis work.
There are dozens of wiki implementations in the world, and many of those
are written in Perl. As is common with many Perl hacks, they are rarely
modular, and almost never released on CPAN. One major exception is
CGI::Wiki. This is a wiki framework that is extensible and is actively
maintained.
Another exception is this module, CGI::Kwiki. CGI::Kwiki focuses on
simplicity and extensibility. You can create a new kwiki website with a
single command. The module has no prerequisite modules, except the ones
that ship with Perl. It doesn't require a database backend, although it
could be made to use one. The default kwiki behaviour is fairly full
featured, and includes support for html tables. Any behaviour of the
kwiki can be customized, without much trouble.
SPECIAL FEATURES
CGI::Kwiki will come with some fancy addons not found in most wiki
implementations. This comes with the promise that they will not
interfere with the sheer simplicity of the default kwiki interface.
Check http://http://www.kwiki.org/index.cgi?KwikiFeatures from time to
time to see what hot features have been added.
Kwiki Slide Show
You can create an entire PowerPoint-like slideshow, in a single kwiki
page. There is Javascript magic for advancing slides, etc. See the
sample page KwikiSlideShow.
EXTENDING
CGI::Kwiki is completely Object Oriented. You can easily override every
last behaviour by subclassing one of its class modules and overriding
one or more methods. This is generally accomplished in just a few lines
of Perl.
The best way to describe this is with an example. Start with the config
file. The default config file is called "config.yaml". It contains a set
of lines like this:
config_class: CGI::Kwiki::Config
driver_class: CGI::Kwiki::Driver
cgi_class: CGI::Kwiki::CGI
cookie_class: CGI::Kwiki::Cookie
database_class: CGI::Kwiki::Database
metadata_class: CGI::Kwiki::Metadata
display_class: CGI::Kwiki::Display
edit_class: CGI::Kwiki::Edit
formatter_class: CGI::Kwiki::Formatter
template_class: CGI::Kwiki::Template
search_class: CGI::Kwiki::Search
changes_class: CGI::Kwiki::Changes
prefs_class: CGI::Kwiki::Prefs
pages_class: CGI::Kwiki::Pages
slides_class: CGI::Kwiki::Slides
javascript_class: CGI::Kwiki::Javascript
style_class: CGI::Kwiki::Style
scripts_class: CGI::Kwiki::Scripts
This is a list of all the classes that make up the kwiki. You can change
anyone of them to be a class of your own.
Let's say that you wanted to change the BOLD format indicator from
"*bold*" to '''bold'''. You just need to override the "bold()" method of
the Formatter class. Start by changing "config.yaml".
formatter_class: MyKwikiFormatter
Then write a module called "MyKwikiFormatter.pm". You can put this
module right in your kwiki installation directory if you want. The
module might look like this:
package MyKwikiFormatter;
use base 'CGI::Kwiki::Formatter';
sub bold {
my ($self, $text) = @_;
$text =~ s!'''(.*?)'''!$1!g;
return $text;
}
1;
Not too hard, eh? You can change all aspects of CGI::Kwiki like this,
from the database storage to the search engine, to the main driver code.
If you come up with a set of classes that you want to share with the
world, just package them up as a distribution and put them on CPAN.
By the way, you can even change the configuration file format from the
YAML default. If you wanted to use say, XML, just call the file
"config.xml" and write a module called "CGI::Kwiki::Config_xml".
SEE ALSO
All of the rest of the documentation for CGI::Kwiki is available within
your own Kwiki installation. Just install a Kwiki and follow the links!
If you're having trouble or just want to see a Kwiki in action, visit
http://www.kwiki.org first.
AUTHOR
Brian Ingerson
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 2003. Brian Ingerson. All rights reserved.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
See http://www.perl.com/perl/misc/Artistic.html