Module:Cite source/doc


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Module:Cite source is the module that forms the guts of. You should aim to be familiar with Lua before editing it.

Broadly, the module is broken up into 2 major sections. The first is for formatting and storing information gathered from. The second is for acessing this information and producing citations. The main method used by this module for storing data is LuaCache with Semantic MediaWiki as a backup. Variables is used for caching queries on individual pages.

The module opens by importing other util libraries. Currently, these are named in snake_case for some reason but this may be changed to camelCase in future. PREFIX is a constant used by Lua Cache and Variables to name the data stores used by the module. In the case of something going seriously wrong, incriment the number in the prefix. This will reset all data stored by the module. The p table stores the functions returned by the module. These are accesible by the wider wiki. The h table stores the functions only used by other functions in this module.

Following this, there is a short function taken from Stack Overflow that inverts tables, swapping keys and values.

Generating and saving citations
The first major part of this module deals with gathering information from, formatting it into citations and saving it. The main functions here are p.infoboxStore and p.variantStore, the others being called from these 2. The general idea is that each of these 2 functions put together a table containing raw data from the infobox that is then processed by various helper functions to produce the output. These will now be discussed in more detail in the same order as in the module.

h.getAndFormatUnlinkedItems
This function deals with anything that is enterred into the infobox unlinked and comma-separated in the case of multiple entries. Namely, these are the source's anthology, writer, publisher, network and the source that it was adapted from. None of these will be aplicable to every source but they are all handled at the same time by this function.

The function takes as an argument the full table of infobox arguments. A data table is then created with blank entries for each piece of data handled by this function. The keys in this table must match the corresponding keys in the args table and hence the names of the parameters in.

The function then iterates through each entry in this data table and checks if there's a non-empty corresponding entry in the args</tt> table. This way, it processes only the entries in the data</tt> that actually have information in the infobox. The potentially comma-separated string passed to the infobox is then converted into a table. This occurs whever there are actually multiple values for infobox field or not. Either way, we get a table, even if it only has 1 entry.

If this table has more than 4 items, only the first will be assigned to the relevant entry in the data</tt> table, followed by "et al.". This phrase is wrapped in a span with the other values in the table placed in the span's title attribute, displaying them when "et al." is hovered over on desktop. Otherwise (in most cases), all values will be listed in the relevant data</tt> table entry. Each of these are linked with the display text set to the undabbed page name.

The data</tt> table is then returned. This table will be added to by subsequent functions before being converted into an output string.

h.getAndFormatIssuesText</tt> (unused)
Following this is an old unused function which formatted issues for comics. However, this information is not currently being displayed in finished citations and so it has been removed.

It worked very similarly to the above but without links (and without the whole "et al." thing when more than 4 items are given.

h.getAndFormatSeriesText</tt>
This function creates the bit of text stating the source's series. There are multiple places that this could come from in the infobox, none of which are ideal or one-size-fits-tall, which are dealt with here. Therefore, it takes the args</tt> table as an argument.

The simplest case is if citation series</tt> is specified. This is an overide field that allows the exact series to be used to be specified. No further formatting occurs here.

The slightly more complex fallback is if range</tt> is specified. In this case, the field is linked and that is used.

Failing this, series</tt> is used. This infobox field is primarily used for navigation and so is unideal but is often the best that we have. The overrides</tt> (not variable is a data module, Module:Cite source/series overrides, that holds common overrides that should be applied automatically. For example, " Doctor Who television stories </tt>" is very commonly given in the series</tt> infobox field and this data module contains a rule to automatically convert this to " Doctor Who </tt>". If an override does exist, it is used. Otherwise, the raw text passed to series</tt> is used. <tt>series</tt> is a freeform variable which should already have links and hence no additional formatting is applied. Finally, the <tt>season number</tt> entry in the <tt>args</tt> table is checked and, if this exists, the season/series is added to the end of the series text.

The series text produced is this return. Note that, if no series is specified anywhere, this may be blank and this is fine.

<tt>h.getReleaseYearText</tt>
This function formats the release year presented in the infobox. This should be presented unlinked in accordance with and hence a lot of formatting must be done here.

Firstly, all date fields from the infobox are combined, using the first non-empty field in the following list: These fields are run through <tt>util_link.stripDab</tt> in order to remove parenthetical notes and are then split on "-" in order to separate the start and end release dates of serialised sources, these 2 dates being placed in a table.
 * <tt>release date</tt>
 * <tt>broadcast date</tt>
 * <tt>premiere</tt>
 * <tt>beta release date</tt>
 * <tt>cover date</tt>

If this table has 2 or more entries, it can be assumed that there is both a release date and a release end date. These are extracted and assigned to their respective variables. <tt>:gsub("%s+", "")</tt> strips any whitespace while <tt>:sub(-4)</tt> extracts the final 4 characters of the date which should be the year. One simple way to check is to see if the string contained the year can be converted into a number. This is done and, if it can't, the dates are readjusted accordingly.

If the table only has 1 entry, the source only has a single release date and the same process as above occurs on this, without the check to see if the year is a number.

The release date(s) are then formatted with links added and the resulting string is returned.

<tt>h.makeOutput</tt>
This is a key function in this half of the module which combines all of the processed data from all previous functions into a cohesive string of text. It takes as arguments a <tt>data</tt> table containing all of the processed data produced by the previous functions and an <tt>args</tt> table containg the raw arguments from the infobox.

If <tt>data["writer"]</tt> is non-empty, this is added to the output. A check is then made to see if <tt>data["adapted from"]</tt> is non-empty. If it is, this to is added to the output. Moreover, a SMW query is used to check if the source from which the current source was adapted from has a writer. If it does, this added to the output in brackets. If there was no writer, this bit is skipped and only the "adapted from" information is added to the output.

The remaining data is then formatted so that most of it is placed in brackets with the first piece of data outside of the brackets. For example, "Doctor Who season 1 (BBC tv, 1963-1964)". To achieve this, all possible pieces of data are looped through and, if they exist, they are added to a table called <tt>loopData</tt>. It is at this stage that italics are added to the source's anthology, if it was published within one. The remainder of the output is then built up through a series of if statements.

Following this, if the <tt>outputText</tt> variable is, for whatever reason, blank, it is set to an error message. Otherwise, a full stop is added. <tt>outputText</tt> is then returned.

<tt>h.storeText</tt>
This little function deals with storing the output of this half of the module. The first line stores it to Extension:Variables. The next line deletes any previous text for this source stored in Extension:LuaCache and the line following this stores the up to date output to LuaCache. The final line stores the output to Extension:Semantic MediaWiki in Property:Story info.

This function returns nothing.

<tt>p.infoboxStore</tt>
This function is the main way in which all of those discussed so far will be called. It is integrated into and will execute on any pages with this infobox. It is responsible for combining all prior functions to take all of the arguments from the infobox and process them into a cohesive string of text which is then stored.

It takes as an argument the frame object. If you are unsure what this is, have a look at this blog post. The arguments passed to the infobox are then extracted and assigned to the <tt>args</tt> table. The next line takes the first unamed argument passed to the module when it is invoked in the template. This is not the first argument passed to the infobox, rather something hardcoded and passed into the module directly by the template. This first unamed argument will be <tt> </tt>, a magic word that evaluates to the name of the page that the infobox is used on.

Following this, the <tt>citation text</tt> argument is checked and, if it exists, pretty much everything else is skipped and just this is used for the output.

Otherwise, a full citation is put together. Firstly, the <tt>separator</tt> argument is checked. This is used for whenever there is a list of multiple items. They aresplit on commas by default but other separators can be set if necassary, such as if commas appear in one of the items in the list.

The arguments passed into the various formatting functions documented above are actually not entirely the raw arguments passed into the infobox. A bit of pre-processing occurs here first. Firstly, <tt>anthology</tt> and <tt>audio anthology</tt> are combined. The same happens to <tt>adapted from</tt> and <tt>novelisation of</tt>.

Following this, the bulk of the processing to produce the finished additional info occurs by calling each of the functions documented above. The <tt>data</tt> table is created by <tt>h.getAndFormatUnlinkedItems(args)</tt> and then added to by each of the other 2 functions. Note the commented out line. This information is not currently included in the additional information but may be reincluded in the future.

Following this, <tt>h.makeOutput</tt> is run and the result of this is passed to <tt>h.storeText</tt> to be stored. Nothing is returned from the function.

<tt>p.variantStore</tt>
This function is similar to the one above and is used to produce citations for variants of a source that are covered on the same page as the main version, such as animated reconstructions, narrated soundtracks or audiobook readings. It is called solely from.

This function begins identically to the one above

Following the combination of <tt>anthology</tt> and <tt>audio anthology</tt>, the <tt>release year</tt> and <tt>release date</tt> variables are combined. Note that, while only the year is required, the full date can be specified, hence this step. Each of the processing functions discussed above are then called, only with the processed data being saved into the <tt>variantData</tt> table instead of the <tt>data</tt> table.

Next <tt>data["variant"]</tt> is defined. This is the name by which the variant citation will be accessible through and will also be displayed in the finished citation.

Following this, the finished citation text is generated. First, the string in <tt>data["variant"]</tt> has its first letter capitalised. Then, a table called <tt>KEYS</tt> is defined, containing the keys of all pieces of data from <tt>variantData</tt> to be included in the final output. These are then iterated through and the corresponding keys in <tt>variantData</tt> are checked. A comma separated list is then generated and, if this list is not empty, it is surrounded by brackets and added to the finished citation. Finally, the finished citation generated by <tt>p.infoboxStore</tt> is retrieved from variables and added. The finished citation is then stored through <tt> h.storeText</tt>.

Nothing is returned from this function.

Displaying citations
The second major part of this module deals with requesting the stored citation for the provided source and adding to that all of the additional information given when is used. It's main function is <tt>p.displayCitation</tt> with the other 2 being called from it. Each function will now be discussed in the order they're presented in the function.

<tt>h.generatePreciseCite</tt>
This function takes a number of arguments providing information to make citations precise and formats this into a string which can be appended to the output. It starts by defining <tt>preciseCite</tt> as an empty string. This variable will be added to and returned at the end.

What follows is a series of <tt>if</tt> statements to put everything together. The top level <tt>if</tt> checks if the <tt>precisecite</tt> argument is provided to the template call. If it is, this overides all other arguments and forms the entirety of the precise cite text. Otherwise, a table is defined with keys for each piece of information that can be included in this output. Each of these potential pieces of information is then gone through in order: The pieces of information in the table are then iterated through, added to the output deliminated by "; ". Finally, the trailing "; " is removed and the finished string is returned.
 * The <tt>ed</tt> argument is for the source's edition.
 * The <tt>chapt</tt> argument is used when providing just a named chapter without chapter numbers. If chapter numbers are provided, these should be in the <tt>chaptnum</tt> argument and can be suplemented with a chapter name provided as <tt>chaptname</tt>. For <tt>chaptnum</tt>, a few characters are checked for in the input string. If these are present, a pluralising "s" is added to the output.
 * The <tt>page</tt> argument is for the page number and uses the same pluralisation method as <tt>chaptnum</tt>.
 * The <tt>timestamp</tt> argument is for custom timestamps and overides all other timestamp-related arguments. Otherwise, a table is defined with keys for each of the 3 values that can form the timestamp. The parameters for each of these are then checked for with <tt>if</tt> statements. If at least one of them exists, they are iterated through in a loop and formatted into a string. Pluralising "s"s are added unless the value is either "1" or "one".

<tt>h.getInfo</tt>
This function deals with requesting the stored citation text. The <tt>dataStore</tt> variable is the key used across each method of storing data to identify the source, or (where relevant) the variant of a source.

The first place that is checked is Variables. This is local to the page and very fast, used if the citation has already been fetched elsewhere in the page. Failing that, LuaCache is checked. If it is available here, Variables is set. If, for whatever reason, LuaCache does not have the required data, Semantic MediaWiki is checked as a failsafe. This option is more complicated so requires some depth.

Semantic MediaWiki cannot have multiple keys per page to store variants. The way variants can be detected is by checking the data type of the SMW result. If it is a table, it includes variants. This is fine if there is only one variant but it is very hard to distinguish multiple variants so the code currently doesn't. This should come up so rarely, however, that it is likely fine to never fix this. If it is the case, an error is given. If the data type is string, we have no variants to worry about and things are simple. Regardless of the result, the requested data is saved to Variables and LuaCache.

If data was unable to be found in any location, an error is given. Finally, the <tt>info</tt> variables containing the requested info is returned.

<tt>p.displayCitation</tt>
This function, by far the biggest (taking up over 200 lines), is called from and combines the stored citation with all of the extra information provided to the template. It begins by setting up the <tt>frame</tt> and initialising some basic variables. The <tt>name</tt> argument is then checked. If it has a value, this citation is either referencing a previous named citation or defining a new one. If it is referencing a previous citation, this is used as the <tt>finishedCitation</tt>. Otherwise, a new one is generated from the information provided.

The first unamed argument is checked. This should contain the source that is being cited's name. If it doesn't exist, an error is returned. Otherwise, linking brackets are stripped. These are allowed to be present for linking autosuggest.

The link's <tt>additionalDisplay</tt> text is then dealt with. This is shown as part of the link's display text alongside the source's name. There are a number of things that can be included in it which are checked in a series of <tt>if elseif</tt> statements. The only complication is the <tt>notital</tt> argument which causes the source's title not to display. If this argument is set, colons are not included for multipath source details.

The <tt>section</tt> of the page being linked to is then dealt with, again using an <tt>if elseif</tt> statement. The <tt>preciseCite</tt> is then generated using <tt>h.generatePreciseCite</tt> as discussed earlier.

If the a named part or episode is being cited, this is then checked for. Italics are included by default but are removed if necessary. This is achieved using the <tt>ital</tt> variable which is always concatenated into the output but can either contain " '' " or nothing. Similarly, <tt>quote</tt> is blank by default but is set to """ (a quotation mark symbol) if necessary. If there is a named episode or part being cited, this is set as the display text. Otherwise, the user-defined display text in the second unamed argument is used. Otherwise, the undabbed page name of the cited source is used. Overiding all of these, if the <tt>notital</tt> argument is set, no tital is display. In any case, the <tt>additionalDisplay</tt> is concatenated on. The <tt>pretext</tt> variable is also built here, displayed before the main bit of the collapsible text and containing information on where the part or episode being cited is from.

The next block of code deals with the actual text in the collapsible portion of the citation. If the <tt>citationtext</tt> argument is set, this is used. Otherwise, any arguments that overide individual pieces of data in the citation are checked for and, if any are present, the other pieces of data are requested through Semantic MediaWiki and a new citation is built up using the same functions as are discussed earlier. This process involves building up a new SMW query for the data not overidden, cleaning up the result of this query and formatting the results. However, in the majority of cases, no overides will be provided and none of this will happen. In these cases, <tt>h.getInfo</tt> is called to retrieve the citation saved in the source's infobox. The <tt>collapsibleText</tt> is then built from the three elements: the <tt>pretext</tt> built earlier, the <tt>main</tt> text built here and the <tt>preciseCite</tt> text. If the <tt>noinfo</tt> argument was set, only <tt>preciseCite</tt> is included in the collapsible.

Then, if the <tt>collapsibleText</tt> does not end with a ".", one is added. All of the text previously defined above is then concatenated into one final output string containing all of the required syntax to make the collapsible work. This makes use of collapsible elements where unique class and ID pair to make the [+] uncollapse the collapsible involves a number that increments automatically with every use of the template using Variables. If there is no collapsible text to display, an output without the collapsible is produced instead.

If a named citation is being defined, that is done here. Finally, the debug argument <tt>wikitextoutput</tt> is checked. If it is set, the output is provided as pure, unprocessed wikitext. The <tt>finishedCitation</tt> is then returned.

The final thing to occur in the module is that the <tt>p</tt> table, containing all of the functions intended to be executed through templates, is returned.


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Authors and acknowledgements
This module was primarily authored by User:Bongolium500. He would like to thank the frequenters of the #lua and #smw-on-fandom channels on the Fandom Discord server for their invaluable advice and contributions. In particular, User:RheingoldRiver enabled extensions on this wiki to facilitate this project (she used to be a Wiki Representative), reviewed earlier versions of the code and helped talk through ideas to get this project finished.

Thanks must also be given to every editor who ever provided feedback on this project and to User:Scrooge MacDuck who permitted Bongolium to test before he was an admin.

Finally, acknowlegement must be given to the authors and contributors of each of the modules imported at the top of this module, as well as to lhf on Stack Overflow for their table inverting function.

Note to fututre contributors: please add your own name and that of any others who helped you here.