wiki-remote.el --- edit pages on a remote wiki
This package has been abandoned by AlexSchroeder. If you want to take over, feel free to do so (and fix this comment). AlexSchroeder went on to develop the SimpleWikiEditMode which replaces WikiRemote and no longer depends on url.el.
This package allows you to load and save pages from a remote wiki using w3 functionality. Just call ‘wiki-remote-get’
and enter page name and wiki name. In order to save, hit C-c C-c.
Get the source:
wiki-remote.el requires w3 or w3m.
(require 'w3)
Currently three wiki engines are supported, Usemod, Zwiki and CLiki. For phpwiki see the needed functions below.
If you want to follow links, you need a wiki mode to edit the file itself – either WikiMode or EmacsWikiMode. See WikiModes. The default is plain text mode, which is good enough to edit the page.
There is a customizable option that allows you to choose which function to call once wiki-remote.el has downloaded the remote page. The new buffer will be in wiki-remote-mode, a minor mode that has just one keybinding: C-c C-c. That will save the page back to the server.
Usemod detects editing conflicts by adding hidden fields to the form, so this data has to be stored in buffer local variables. Zwiki detects editing conflicts using timestamps, I think. When I tested this 2001-05-25, however, I saw no such timestamps while editing zwiki pages. Who knows, maybe this has been rendered obsolete?
Anyway, this thing is useful for looong pages – because Netscape 4.74 for GNU/Linux (the one I am using) will crash when you are editing very long pages (20k and more). Emacs to the rescue! Get the page using wiki-remote.el, edit, save, and continue browsing using your favorite browser…
If you are using ‘wiki-remote-get’
to edit a page, you can save your edits using ‘C-c C-c’
. All operations will use ‘url-retrieve’
which is part of the w3 package.
Surf to the emacswiki using w3 and set your Preferences as usual. Note that you must delete the password. When I tried it, the default value of “*” caused an error when I saved my changes. Once you do that, the cookie will be created. Don’t forget to save the cookie! Use `M-: (url-cookie-write-file)’ to do that.
It seems that after using Emacs for some time, open-network-stream starts to be buggy – you might run into situations where you cannot open new connections.
Yes, if you have emacs-w3m, you can use it as well. Here is from a mail, slightly edited.
From: KahlilHodgson Subject: wiki-remote.el To: AlexSchroeder Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 08:58:29 +1000
Here’s some code that makes wiki-remote.el work if you have emacs-w3m installed INSTEAD of w3.
(unless (condition-case nil (require 'w3) (error nil)) (require 'w3m)
(defvar url-request-method nil) (defvar url-request-data nil) (defvar url-inhibit-mime-parsing nil) (defalias 'url-hexify-string 'w3m-url-encode-string)
(defun url-retrieve (url) "Return a buffer containing the HTML contents of URL using w3m." (let ((w3m-async-exec nil)) ;; wait for output (set-buffer (get-buffer-create " *wiki-edit*")) ;; invisible (erase-buffer) ;; flush previous edit (w3m-retrieve url nil 'no-cache url-request-data) ;; want the cdr of the return value to a buffer object `(t . ,(current-buffer)))) )
;; PhpWiki 1.3 support by ReiniUrban <rurban@x-ray.at> (defun phpwiki-get-page (page url) "Return a buffer with the plain text contents of PAGE at URL." (let* ((data (phpwiki-get-data page url)) (text (cdr (assq 'text data))) (buf (get-buffer-create page))) (set-buffer buf) (erase-buffer) (insert text) ;(setq phpwiki-data data) buf)) (defun phpwiki-get-data (page url) "Extract the textarea content from the page." (message "Reading %s at %s" page url) (save-excursion (let ((buf (cdr (url-retrieve (concat url "?action=viewsource&pagename=" (url-hexify-string page)))))) (when (null buf) (error "Could not retrieve %s" url)) (when wiki-remote-debug (switch-to-buffer-other-window buf)) (set-buffer buf) (goto-char (point-min)) (let ((text (if (search-forward-regexp "<textarea class=\"wikiedit\"\nname=\"content\"") (let ((start (search-forward-regexp ">")) end) (search-forward "</textarea>") (setq end (copy-marker (match-beginning 0))) (mapcar (lambda (pair) (wiki-remote-massage (car pair) (cdr pair) start end)) '(("> class="comment">;" . ">") ("< class="comment">;" . "<") ("" class="comment">;" . "\"") ("& class="comment">;" . "&") ("^M" . ""))) (buffer-substring start end))))) `((text . ,text) (title . ,page))))))
(defun phpwiki-put-page (page url content) "Save buffer to wiki at URL with new CONTENT." (interactive) (unless (buffer-modified-p) (error "No changes need to be saved")) (let ((url-request-method "POST") (url-request-data (concat "edit[save]=Save&edit[summary]=" (url-hexify-string (read-from-minibuffer "Summary: " "")) "&action=edit&pagename=" (url-hexify-string page) "&edit[content]=" (url-hexify-string content))) ;:(url-inhibit-mime-parsing t) ; ?? (request (concat url (url-hexify-string page) "?action=edit"))) (message "Saving...") (let ((buf (cdr (url-retrieve request)))) (message "Verifying...") (when wiki-remote-debug (switch-to-buffer-other-window buf)) (when (not (phpwiki-verify-page buf page)) (error "Error saving page")))))
(defun phpwiki-verify-page (buf page) "Verify that buffer BUF actually contains Saved: PAGE. This should catch all errors caused by the wiki engine that do not result in a HTTP error." (save-excursion (set-buffer buf) (goto-char (point-min)) (and (search-forward "<!-- Page title -->" nil t) ;; Strip out localized "<h1>Saved: " message ;; An unsuccessful save has <h1><a href="HomePage?action=BackLinks" (search-forward (concat "<a href=\"" page "\" class=\"wiki\">" page "</a></h1>\n<!-- End top -->") nil t))))
BayleShanks has written a WikiGateway – code that does HTML munging for various wikis out there. Maybe it would be interesting to bundle his WikiGateway with our WikiRemote. We could offload the technical wiki details and concentrate on the Emacs interface. – AlexSchroeder
Speaking of a protocol, you guys might be interested in an XmlRpcToWiki interface. See:
So far I’ve implemented a semi-current version of the API as an add-on script to TWiki, Usemod, and MoinMoin. No need to convince the engine authors, but on the other hand, the engine authors won’t necessarily be helping me stay current. – LesOrchard
Perhaps my implementation of XmlRpc for Emacs could be useful in writing a mode for editing the EmacsWiki. – DanielLundin
I’ve switched to the text-browser w3m, and defined GnuClient as my editor for text-areas. Now I can use Emacs to edit text-areas while still using a fast text browser. And it is bettern that using w3m within Emacs using emacs-w3m, because it doesn’t allow you to edit forms (at unless you use w3m-mode from CVS). – AlexSchroeder
Yes, this works well. However, it’s not an ideal solution. First, I don’t consider w3m an ideal browser. Second, there’s not a good Wiki:WikiEngine agnostic mode for displaying/editing the wiki pages in. I will say having an emacs buffer in fundamental mode is better than a mozilla edit box. Maybe if I got W3mMode working better I would be happy with this. As above, I still feel we need a mode that can read the text formatting rules from the server and then highlight the buffer accordingly. – LathI
I wrote SimpleWikiMode for just that. – AlexSchroeder
Another way to proceed is to use Mozilla and ViewSourceWith or mozex (not maintened any more) that allows to span your editor of choice to edit a textarea. – VincentBernat
If you’re using Opera, you can set up a command to open the cached page in Emacs (that’s easy, something like `Execute program, “gnuclient”, “%s”’ would do), edit the textarea (see below for a narrowing hack), save the page, get back to Opera and use the command ‘Reload display’
(not binded to anything by default). Your textarea will update to what you saved in front of your eyes! (in fact, I’m using this setup right now)
Now, if someone could help make this hack less ugly… (it was quickly cannibalised from `cfml-helper-mode.el’)
(defun guti-search-start-textarea () (end-of-buffer) (search-backward-regexp "<textarea[^<]+>")) (defun guti-search-end-textarea () (search-forward "</textarea>")) (defun guti-narrow-to-textarea () "Narrows to an textarea" (interactive) (guti-search-start-textarea) (let ((beg (point))) (guti-search-end-textarea) (narrow-to-region beg (point))) (goto-char 0)) (defun guti-twiki-textarea-edit () "Edits a twiki textarea" (interactive) (guti-narrow-to-textarea) (dos2unix))
Function ‘guti-narrow-to-textarea’
is supposed to be called from ‘gnuclient -f’
, but currently it only works for me when doing it explicitly in the minibuffer. – CristianGutierrez