Transcluding Children with Their Titles

#1

Maybe someone can help me get started…

I have a tiddler with a vtab in it (I’m using it for alphabetical lists, like contacts etc).
For each letter I have a tiddler that is tagged to show in the vtab.

I want each letter to translude its children (Via tag - so you can use the tabs OR the TOC), including their titles and an HR between them. I’m thinking it would be a macro and I pass in the current tiddler’s title for identifying its children (Or I could have it list a different tiddler’s children this way).

I’m not sure how I would go about looping through the children etc, getting their titles and transluding them etc.

Thank you!

#2

Assuming that you want each tab to display the same type of content, I’d add template:"AlphabeticalIndex" (if you’re using <<tabs...>>) or template="AlphabeticalIndex" (if you’re using <$macrocall $name="tabs" ... /> or <$transclude $variable=tabs ... />). Then make a separate template tiddler called AlphabeticalIndex:

<$tiddler tiddler=<<currentTab>>>
<$list filter="[tag<currentTiddler>]">

!!! <$link/>
<$transclude mode=block />
<hr>
</$list>
</$tiddler>

Notes:

  • The name of the current tab is stored in the variable <<currentTab>> (not <<currentTiddler>>—this remains the name of the tiddler hosting the tab set). So we’ll start out by using the $tiddler widget to set <<currentTiddler>> = <<currentTab>>. (As a bonus, this $tiddler widget won’t have any effect if the <<currentTab>> variable is undefined, so if you like, you can use this same template as a ViewTemplate on the letter tiddlers themselves, outside the tabs context.)
  • The $list widget uses a filter to make a list of tiddler titles and then applies the same template—whatever you include between <$list>...</$list>—to each of them. Within the template, the <<currentTiddler>> variable refers to the current list item, unless you specify another variable name to use. Here, I’ve made a very basic list template that will render
    1. a link to the tiddler, styled as a <h3> header. (Note the blank line above the header; this is needed to preserve block mode wikitext like the header!)
    2. the transcluded contents of that tiddler’s text field: <$transclude/> defaults to tiddler=<<currentTiddler>> field=text unless otherwise specified. {{!!text}} would retrieve the same content, but I generally like to use <$transclude mode=block /> instead to make sure that any formatting you used in the transcluded tiddler is properly preserved.
    3. an <hr>. Self-explanatory!

I used a very simple filter, [tag<currentTiddler>]: this means that the “A” tab will display all the tiddlers (and only the tiddlers) with the tag “A”. But it’s possible to write a filter for nearly any set of tiddlers you can think of. And in fact, since we’re displaying a template, not the contents of the “A” tiddler, “A” doesn’t even need to be an extant tiddler: <<currentTab>> alone will give us all the information we need for this type of display.

This is a very quick and basic overview; if you have any further questions, please feel free to ask!

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#3

This works great! - I’ll work on implementation - either template or macro etc.
Thank you so much!

1 Like
#4

Do note that the template used to render the tab contents needs to be a separate tiddler (so you can’t use a macro as your tab template, for instance.) You could store the <<tabs>> macrocall itself in another macro if you want to use the same index in multiple places, though—or just transclude the tiddler that contains the <<tabs>>, which will likely be a little more efficient.

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#5

I currently have my tabs defined in a macro. One for vertical tabs and one for horizontal ones. And I pass in the tag I want to use for the tabs instance.