How to use the transclude widget and shorthand transcludes

Tips & Tricks
#41

See how I “push” the short form of the transclude futher;

I hope you all find the following “code patterns interesting” but it also illustrates a hard limit I come across.

Because I am not privy to this history and the approaches used in the core, yet I have spent a lot productive time with tiddlywiki, from the non-developer super user perspective, I see it from a different direction. It is interesting seeing the diversity of perspective of the same thing. As a result of my different perspectives I have developed some different “code Patterns” to use with transclusions.

Using the “current tiddler” as parameter(s)
{{anything||mytiddler}} {{||mytiddler}} {{filter||mytiddler}}

More often than not I use the {{||mytiddler}} form because mytiddler is designed to make use of the fields and variables available already in the tiddler doing the transclusion. That is I have no need for parameters in this transclusion.

But If I wanted parameters for example I can reuse the current tiddler, eg filter as parameter;
{{ [all[shadows+tiddlers]tag[$:/tags/ViewToolbar]sort[]] || mytiddler}}

with my tiddler;

<$list filter="[subfilter<currentTiddler>]" >

</$list>

But I can also test if the currentTiddler is a filter,

\define filter-prefix() [
<$list filter="[<currentTiddler>prefix<filter-prefix>]" >
   process current tiddler as filter
</$list>

and if the <<currentTiddler>> value is needed I can still use this;

<$set name=myfilter value=<<currentTiddler>> emptyValue="default filter">

<$tiddler tiddler=<<storyTiddler>> >
   using <<myfilter>> and <<currentTiddler>>
</$tiddler>

</$set>

With the above methods the currentTiddler is the parameter(s) to the transclusion and this opens many possibilities such as I could pass a fieldname as a parameter to a transclusion, then use this to get<currentTiddler>.

What is the problem?

There is no problem if I can simply make use of existing fields and variables in the transclusion, be it the currentTiddler, StoryTiddler or the transcluded tiddler itself.

The problem arises it I want to provide more than one “parameter” in the shorthand transclusion.

What kind of parameters may I want to set and pass more than one of in the shorthand transclusion?

  • a tiddler title/list of titles
  • a filter
  • a string
  • one or more fieldnames and/or their values
  • one or more variable names and/or their values

So yes if we could pass additional parameters to the shorthand transclusion I could make a larger set of snazzy shorthand transcludes.

A design and debug trick
I tend to make use of the transclusion variable when building such shorthand transcludes;
<<transclusion>> Documented here

Format

  1. the title of the current tiddler
  2. the title of the tiddler being transcluded
  3. the name of the field being transcluded
  4. the name of the property name or index being transcluded
  5. the name of the subtiddler being transcluded from a plugin
  1. is the interesting one, because it returns what I call the “code tiddler” ie the tiddler the “current tiddler is transcluding”, “mytiddler” in the above examples, so I can make use of the title of the transcluded tiddler if I want.
#42

<jaw-drop> :open_mouth: I’ve never seen that. Thanks Tones!

Side note: "mytiddler" is less helpful there. Perhaps "mytemplate" or "my-tiddler-template" might have been better choices. "mytiddler" implies any-old-tiddler, which it isn't for the purposes of this article.
#43

Be aware this is only possible if a tiddler to be transcluded is coded to respond.

#44

Right. Which is why I said…

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