Question

I have a PhoneCalls topic in the TWiki for my company, where I enter the details of calls so that my boss can keep up to date. I have a link from the main web to this, but what I would like is to have next to the link something like "last updated: 16/06/2003" and maybe the content of the last entry. I'm sure this is possible?

-- DanielMundy - 30 Jun 2003

Answer

One crude but simple way to achieve this is to create an embedded search, like the one in AskedQuestions, but have the search term so narrow that it only lists your topic (search for that particular topic name). You can hide the search header and other information so the only thing you see is one line with topic name, date of last change, and whodunnit. You can also choose whether the first 100 or so characters should be displayed ("summary=on").

So put this text in a topic:

%SEARCH{ "HowToShowUpdatedContent" scope="topic" casesensitive="on" nosearch="on" noheader="on" nototal="on" order="modified" reverse="on"}%

Will look like this when viewed:

I know that this solution is not the same as having a link in the middle of a paragraph, and with a last-updated message in ( ) after the link, but it's a start.

Related topics: TWikiVariables, FormattedSearch

-- TorbenGB - 30 Jun 2003

This is almost perfectly what I want but I wonder if instead of the search showing the top few lines of the page, it could show the diff? That way it could show everything that was changed in the last edit?

-- DanielMundy - 07 Jul 2003

The normal search results always show the first 100 or so characters of the page contents. It cannot show the diffs instead. If you need this, then you or somebody else needs to develop such functionality first.

-- TorbenGB - 08 Jul 2003

To explain Daniel why search does not display dif: Search looks into lastest version of the page, to call diff will be to add additional processing to extract diff from RCS system (for every page) - not everybody wants to wait, or you might want last couple of recent changes...

-- PeterMasiar - 08 Jul 2003

Not an answer but another approach to getting the changes. It sounds like everything is being tacked onto a single topic. If you use the URL for that topic, but where it says view replace that with rdiff you will get the latest differences, on top of all the earlier differences. It's not pretty or user friendly or searchable or configurable, but it might be somehow useful to know about.

Also, if the calls are all listed on one page, you might consider restructuring it so that it goes most-recent-on-top. Then the search suggestion above would display some of the most recent entry, maybe even the time if that was entered at the beginning of each call.

Please let us know if any of these suggestions have proven useful, of if you've come up with a better idea yourelf.

-- SueBlake - 20 Jul 2003