The following describes a setup to run multiple individual wikis that share one or more sets of tiddlers between them. In most use-cases the shared tiddlers would be config tiddlers, template tiddlers or, more generally, customized system tiddlers that would be common for two or more wikis.
The basic file structure is assumed as follows
/
├── wiki1/
│ ├── tiddlywiki.info
│ └── tiddlers/
│ └── shared/
│ └── tiddlywiki.files
├── wiki2/
│ ├── tiddlywiki.info
│ └── tiddlers/
│ └── shared/
│ └── tiddlywiki.files
├── wiki3/
│ ├── tiddlywiki.info
│ └── tiddlers/
│ └── shared/
│ └── tiddlywiki.files
└── shared/
└── tiddlers/
The tiddlywiki.info files are the basic configuration files, loading plugins, etc. as for any node.js wiki.
tiddlywiki.files
The tiddlywiki.files files tell TW to load tiddlers from somewhere else (see tiddlywiki.files Files. For the case described above they all look identical:
{
"directories": [
{
"path": "../../../shared/tiddlers",
"isTiddlerFile": true,
"isEditableFile": true,
"searchSubdirectories": true,
"fields": {
"source": "shared"
}
}
]
}
Note that for each tiddler that is loaded from the shared folder, a field source is added with the value shared to help with identifying the tiddler source from within the wiki. At this point it has no other function. The value can be set to anything, e.g. to distinguish multiple shared sources (we might call them bags).
For any tiddlers that should be shared between wikis, the corresponding files are put into the respective shared folder (and should be deleted from the folders of all wikis that load them from the shared source.
Multiple shared folders can be set up this way, and for each a subfolder within the tiddlers folder of the wiki must be created with a corresponding tiddlywiki.files file. These subfolders are a recipe of what bags to load for each wiki.
Propagating updates
If shared tiddlers are edited in one wiki, or if files are moved manually into/from the shared folder, tiddlywiki must be restarted in node.js and the wiki refreshed in the browser to propagate changes.
The same holds true when wikis are synchronized between multiple machines to propagate the changes to all of them. However, compared to single-file wikis, sync conflicts usually only affect a small number of tiddlers / files and can usually be identified easily.
Using tiddlyserver
tiddlyserver can be used to serve multiple node.js wikis simultaneously and to also serve static files like images and fonts (and single-file wikis).
The config file settings.json in the root folder of the folder structure shown above could look like this:
{
"tree": {
"wiki1": "./wiki1",
"wiki2": "./wiki2",
"wiki3": "./wiki3",
"media":"./media"
},
"_datafolderserver":"C:/Users/user/AppData/Roaming/npm/node_modules/tiddlywiki",
"bindInfo": {
"bindAddress": ["127.0.0.1"],
"port": 8080,
"filterBindAddress": true,
},
"$schema": "./settings-2-2.schema.json"
}
The _datafolderserver tells tiddlyserver where to find the tiddlywiki core files.
The command line to serve all wikis is then
tiddlyserver --config .\settings.json
The URL for wiki1 would then be http://127.0.0.1:8080/wiki1, and so forth.
Using $:/config/FileSystemPaths
When using $:/config/FileSystemPaths to create a folder hierarchy corresponding to tiddler namespaces (see Customising Tiddler File Naming) like $:/core, care must be taken that files from are not automatically saved back to the local wiki folder. This is where the source field can help.
[is[draft]search-replace:g:regexp[/|\\],[_]addprefix[drafts/]]
[!field:source[shared]removeprefix[$:/yaisog]addprefix[system/yaisog/]]
[!field:source[shared]removeprefix[$:/core]addprefix[system/core/]]
[!field:source[shared]removeprefix[$:/config]addprefix[system/config/]]
The rules in $:/config/FileSystemPaths would cause loaded shared tiddlers to be saved according to any matching rules. Adding the source field check avoids these rules to match and thus the tiddler is saved back to the shared directory.
New files will be saved to the local wiki folder, which would be the topmost bag. Tiddlers in that folder override any loaded shared tiddlers.
