From SMW+ Semantic Enterprise Wiki
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Semantic Forms is an extension to MediaWiki that allows users to add and edit data using forms. It is heavily tied in with the Semantic MediaWiki extension, and is meant to be used for structured data that has semantic markup. Having Semantic MediaWiki installed is a precondition for the Semantic Forms extension; the code will not fully work without it.
Very simply, Semantic Forms allows you to have forms for adding and editing data on your wiki, without any programming. Forms can be created and edited not just by administrators, but by users themselves.
| Software product information | |
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| Latest release: | Help:Semantic Forms 1.9 |
| All releases: | Semantic Forms 1.9.1, Semantic Forms 1.9 (see all releases...) |
| Contained in: | SMW+ 1.5.0 |
| Distributed by: | Yaron Koren |
| License: | GNU General Public License |
| Download: |  open here...
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| Installation: | Installing Semantic Forms 1.9 |
| New release | |
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Fill in the name of the new release of this product and click on "add new release".
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Semantic Forms is an extension to MediaWiki that allows users to add and edit data using forms. It is heavily tied in with the Semantic MediaWiki extension, and is meant to be used for structured data that has semantic markup. Having Semantic MediaWiki installed is a precondition for the Semantic Forms extension; the code will not fully work without it.
Very simply, Semantic Forms allows you to have forms for adding and editing data on your wiki, without any programming. Forms can be created and edited not just by administrators, but by users themselves.
The main components of Semantic Forms functionality are form definition pages, which exist in a new namespace, 'Form:'. These are pages consisting of markup code which gets parsed when a user goes to add or edit data. Since forms are defined strictly through these definition pages, users can themselves create and edit forms, without the need for any actual programming.
The Semantic Forms extension enforces the use of templates in creating semantic data. It does not support direct semantic markup in data pages; instead, all the semantic markup is meant to be stored indirectly through templates. A form allows a user to populate a pre-defined set of templates for a page (behind the scenes, that data is turned into semantic properties once the page is saved).
Forms can also be used to edit the data in an existing page, and you can enable an 'edit with form' tab to show up on any page; see "The 'edit with form' tab".
Semantic Forms also supports autocompletion of fields, so users can easily see what the previously-entered values were for a given field. This greatly helps to avoid issues of naming ambiguity, spelling, etc.
Data in a page that doesn't fit into the form, like a free-form text description of the page's subject, isn't ignored when the page is edited with a form; rather, it is placed into a separate input box called "free text".
Semantic Forms also provides hooks to let outside code easily define new input types; this is useful for, among other things, new extensions to define input types that use code that they provide.
Semantic Forms also provides other features: a form to create semantic properties, a form to create templates, a form to create user forms, pages that list all the templates and all the user forms on the site, and others. This documentation covers all the features, but see especially the Special pages section.
Special pages
The extension defines various "special" MediaWiki pages:
- Special:CreateForm - lets a user create a new form for adding/editing data. (See example of page)
- Special:CreateTemplate - lets a user create a new template. (See example of page)
- Special:CreateProperty - lets a user create a new property. (See example of page)
- Special:CreateCategory - lets a user create a new category. (See example of page)
- Special:CreateClass - a page that creates all the elements for a single "class" at the same time - properties, template, form and category (See example of page). Access to this page is dictated by the 'createclass' MediaWiki permission; by default, it is available to all logged-in users.
- Special:FormEdit - lets a user either create or edit a page using a user-defined form. (See example of page.) (This page was, until version 1.9, two separate pages: "Special:AddData" and "Special:EditData".)
- Special:FormStart - used to route a user to either 'FormEdit' or the relevant page's "edit with form" tab. This page should not be accessed directly by users. (This page was known until version 1.9 as "Special:AddPage".)
- Special:Forms - lists all form pages on the site. (See example of page)
- Special:Templates - lists all templates on the site. (See example of page)
- Special:UploadWindow - lets a user upload a file; very similar to the standard Special:Upload page, but without the skin. (http://discoursedb.org/wiki/Special:UploadWindow See example of page]) This page is called from within a form, and should not be accessed directly by users.
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- References
The content of this page uses material from the article Extension:Semantic_Forms published by Yaron Koren (retrieved on 2010/04/19).
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
| Content title | Semantic Forms Extension + |
| For audience | Administrator +, End user +, Gardener +, and Ontologist + |
| Has overview | Semantic Forms is an extension to MediaWik … Semantic Forms is an extension to MediaWiki that allows users to add and edit data using forms. It is heavily tied in with the Semantic MediaWiki extension, and is meant to be used for structured data that has semantic markup. Having Semantic MediaWiki installed is a precondition for the Semantic Forms extension; the code will not fully work without it. Very simply, Semantic Forms allows you to have forms for adding and editing data on your wiki, without any programming. Forms can be created and edited not just by administrators, but by users themselves. y administrators, but by users themselves. |
| Has prerequisites | Semantic Forms 1.9 + |
| Latest release | Semantic Forms 1.9 + |
| Position in subsection overview | 7 + |
| Reviewed by | Daniel + |
| Subsection of | All manuals + |
| Transitive Subsection of | All manuals + |
