Feature Proposals » Execute 'view' on a given list of topics from CLI

Motivation

At the CERN TWiki, the Plugins.VarCachePlugin is used to cache heavy topics.

When VarCache is outdated or not in use, some instances of %SEARCH{...}% (VarSEARCH) and %TREEVIEW{...}% (TreePlugin) are so heavy that loading them would lead to web server timeout.

We created the RunTopicsAddOn for our TWiki, and it is used in several cron jobs to tick / refresh resource-heavy topics utilizing functionality like VarSEARCH and TreePlugin.

The motivation for this feature request is to discuss the description of this add-on, and to uncover whether:

• The functionality already is available elsewhere.
• If the add-on could do things differently.

Description and Documentation

The add-on consists of three files:

• A documentation topic in /data/TWiki/RunTopicsAddOn.txt
• A Contrib module in /lib/TWiki/Contrib/RunTopicsAddOn.pm
• A tool in /tools/runtopics

To use the add-on, the absolute path to the folder containing TWiki executables is defined in configure or directly in lib/LocalSite.cfg:

$TWiki::cfg{RunTopicsAddon}{ScriptPath} = '/path/to/twiki/bin';

The add-on supports three parameters;

• (Mandatory) webs: A list of webs
• (Mandatory) topics: A list of topics
• (Optional) A template topic

Examples

Example 1) Run 'view' on the TestTopic topic on CMS and Atlas webs. If CMS.TestTopic or Atlas.TestTopic does not exist, skip running view on it.

perl -I /var/www/twiki/bin/ /var/www/twiki/tools/runtopics webs=CMS,Atlas topics=TestTopic

Example 2) Run 'view' on the FooBar topic in all webs, creating it with by cloning Main.MyTopic if it does not exist:

perl -I /var/www/twiki/bin/ /var/www/twiki/tools/runtopics webs=all topics=FooBar Main.MyTopic

Impact

Implementation

-- Contributors: Terje Ness Andersen - 2014-05-19

Discussion

Thank you Terje for sharing this with the community! Since this is an extension you do not need to go through the feature proposal. Simply package the add-on and release it in the Plugins web. See AddOnPackageHowTo.

FYI, the $TWiki::cfg{RunTopicsAddon}{ScriptPath} setting might not be needed if you change to twiki/bin first, then call ../tools/runtopics. See for example install docs at WatchlistPlugin

-- Peter Thoeny - 2014-05-19

Thank you for the tip, the configure is not needed if standing directory is the bin/ directory as you say. Following BuildContrib, I uploaded the add-on to http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/RunTopicsAddOn.

-- Terje Ness Andersen - 2014-05-19

Nice! Thanks for contributing!!

-- Peter Thoeny - 2014-05-20

I changed the status to ImplementedAsExtension.

-- Peter Thoeny - 2014-06-05