mkdocs-placeholder-plugin 0.3.0

Add dynamic placeholders to your mkdocs page

MkDocs Placeholder Plugin

This plugin allows you to have placeholders in your site, that can be dynamically replaced at runtime using JavaScript (see demo page).

Documentation

This README is just a short intro to the package. For a quick start and detailed information please see the documentation for the last release. The documentation is also available in the docs folder of the source code and can be built localy with MkDocs.

Development version

If you want to use the latest development version (may be broken/buggy from time to time), you can install it with:

python3 -m pip install git+https://github.com/six-two/mkdocs-placeholder-plugin

The corresponding documentation is hosted at https://dev.mkdocs-placeholder-plugin.six-two.dev.

Notable changes

TODOs

• Rewrite python code and decouple it from MkDocs (to be able to use it with other projects).
• Implement propper exception handling for TypeScript code to recover from / compartmentalize non-critical errors.
• Update the documentation.

HEAD

Version 0.3.0

This release may be a bit buggy due to the rewrite and the documentation is not entirely accurate yet. I will update the docs after I also clean up / rewrite the python code (planed for v0.4.0).

• Rewrote the JavaScript code in TypeScript:
  • Packed and minified using Webpack, so the file is a bit smaller
  • Should find stupid errors I make in code paths that I do not test (often)
  • Sophisticated update logic: Instead of always reloading the page it tries to update the DOM in-place (if possible), which should improve user experience a bit and is much faster
  • Recursive placeholders (placeholders that contain placeholders that contain placeholder...) no longer need to be specified in a speific order in the configuration file.
  • A placeholder's default-function and a validator rule's match_function are now evaluated using new Function(...) instead of eval(...), so you need to add a return statement.

Version 0.2.5

• When an JavaScript generated auto-input-table is empty, now a info box is shown (instead of nothing / an empty table).
• Bugfixes:
  • auto_placeholder_tables_javascript had no effect.
  • Pressing Enter on text fields without validators did not try to reload the page,

Version 0.2.4

• Added input validation:
  • Predefined types: domain, file_name_linux, file_name_windows, hostname, ipv4_address, ipv4_range_cidr, ipv4_range_dashes, ipv6_address, path_linux, path_windows, port_number, url_any, url_http
  • Custom validators with rules that either use regex or match_function
• Added placeholder_extra_js field to plugin configuration (for loading custom functions)
• Added default-function attribute for placeholders

Version 0.2.3

• Split JavaScript code into multiple files and made it available via the global PlaceholderData and PlaceholderPlugin objects. These interfaces are not stable, so you should probably not try to rely on them to much.
• Added replace_everywhere attribute for placeholders
• Changes to textbox values are only stored, when you press Enter
• Dynamically generated tables now honor add_apply_table_column
• Improved JavaScript debugging: timestamps, more messages, and you can disable the page reload
• Some visual fixes, mainly for the Material for MkDocs theme

Version 0.2.2

• Improved placeholder input tables:
  • Can now specify which columns to use (and their order)
  • Only show apply values column, if at least one column contains input elements
• Properly handle checkboxes and dropdown menus when performing static replacements
• Hide JavaScript console output by default
• Generate automatic placeholder table dynamically, since if checkboxes / dropdowns are used, it can not be predicted, which values are used on the page.
• Added description-or-name column type to placeholder tables.

Version 0.2.1

• Add option to reload the page if a checkbox/dropdown is changed or a text field is changed and Enter is pressed (to immediately show the new values). This is enabled by default.
• Set initial value for placeholder input fields to "Please enable JavaScript"
• Added option to automatically insert placeholder input tables at the top of each page

Version 0.2.0

• Added new input types (checkbox & dropdown menu)
• Also allow numbers in placeholder names (everywhere except the first character)
• Moved to typed mkdocs config (now requires mkdocs 1.4+)
• Disable input elements for read only placeholders
• Moved a lot of code around, significantly changed JavaScript file

Version 0.1.3

• Placeholder config: Placeholders can now have attributes (like description)
• Tables with inputs for all placeholders on a page can now be generated via <placeholdertable> elements
• Stack traces for fatal exceptions can now be seen with the -v flag (mkdocs serve -v)
• When performing static replacements, the contents are now HTML escaped
• Added script mkdocs-placeholder-replace-static.py

Version 0.1.2

• Implemented static replacements for user-selected pages
• Added timing options. This should make it possible to use with MermaidJS diagrams, but may not always work

Version 0.1.1

• Show a warning if an input element references a non-existent variable
• Show a warning if a variable name does not match the recommended format
• Perform type checks/conversions when loading placeholder data from the data file

Process for releases

This is just for me :)

1. Run linters:

   mypy src
   

   pyflakes src
   

2. Update the changelog in this README file.
3. Update version number in setup.cfg.
4. Build and update package.
5. Create a commit for the release (Version 0.X.Y) and push it.
6. Update the latest-release branch, so that the documentation website gets updated:

   git branch --force latest-release HEAD
   git push origin latest-release