MetaPackage

Created by: lphuberdeau, Last modification: 24 Feb 2006 (03:36 UTC)

MetaPackage allows you to assign key and value pairs to pages. The attributes can be used to perform tracking on various elements or to classify the pages. The package contains various plugins and modules. Various permission levels allow to control different aspects of meta data.

  • view associations (bit_p_view_meta)
  • assign values (bit_p_assign_meta)
  • create new values (bit_p_edit_value_meta)
  • create and manage attributes (bit_p_edit_attribute_meta)

Basic Features

Manage Attributes

An interface allows to create, edit and delete attributes. An attribute is simply a key values can be associated to. The attribute names contain a special notation to allow grouping of attributes. Grouping of attributes can be used in situations where two distinct type of elements must be tracked but use different attributes. To avoid confusion, attributes can be grouped using the dot syntax.

Consider the following set of attributes:

Development.Status
Development.Phase
Development.Lead

Bug Report.Status
Bug Report.Priority
Bug Report.Severity

Documentation.Status
Documentation.Branch
Documentation.Language


Once displayed, these attributes would appear this way (with sample values)

Development
Status: (Not started, Active, Completed)
Phase: (Idea, Design, Implementation, Test)
Lead: (lphuberdeau, xing, ...)
Bug Report
Status: (Open, Fixed, Closed)
Priority: (Low, Average, High)
Severity: (Minor, Major, Critical, Security)
Documentation
Status: (Draft, Awaiting validation, Final)
Branch: (R0, R1, R2, HEAD)
Language: (en, fr, de)


Assign Values

From the edit page, values can be associated to attributes. Only one value can be associated to an attribute at this time. An unlimited amount of attributes can be associated to a single document. The history of attribute changes is preserved for statistical usage (planned feature).

Meta Search

Pages can be searched using attribute associations as the criteria.

Modules

Placeholder

Currently the only module, mod_meta_placeholder is used to display the meta attributes in one of the side columns instead of floating within the page's content. By activating the placeholder, the value display will automatically be transfered to it.

The module is also required to used the METADATA plugin.

Plugins

MetaSearch

The meta search plugin performs a meta search within liberty content. The single parameter of the plugin (filter) is used to define the required attributes and value pair.

The following syntax would list all the open bugs related to a security issue.

{METASEARCH filter="Bug Report.Status:Open,Bug Report.Severity:Security"}


The syntax used is a serie of comma separated key:value pairs.

MetaData

The meta data plugin is used to display raw attributes associated to a page. These are not searchable and will be displayed in the placeholder module instead of inside the page content, even if the content is part of the page.


{METADATA title="Carbon"}
Symbol:C
Number:6
Mass:12.0107(8) g/mol
Electron configuration:1s2 2s2 2p2
Atomic Properties
Crystal structure: Hexagonal
Atomic radius:70 pm
{METADATA}


Information taken from WIkipedia.


Once again, the syntax is based on a very simple key:value pair. Lines without a colon separator are used as a category name. Wiki syntax can be used inside the value part of the lines.

Future?

  • Statistics
  • History display
  • Integration with global search

Comments

SQL Errors

by Brandon Plewe, 02 Apr 2008 (19:01 UTC)
What databases has this package been developed/tested on? I tried to install (from CVS 4/2/08) and use this package (PostGreSQL 8), and kept getting SQL errors, and the errors are minor but correct (that is, the SQL statements are in error, with little things like missing quote marks and such). I was wondering if this was developed on a system that was more lax.
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