Markup Expressions

authors (advanced)

The {(...)} "expression markup" allows for a variety of string and formatting operations to be performed from within markup. Operations defined by this recipe include substr, ftime, strlen, rand, toupper, tolower, ucfirst, ucwords, pagename, and asspaced.

substr-

The "substr" expression extracts portions of a string. The first argument is the string to be processed, the second argument is the initial position of the substring, and the third argument is the number of characters to extract. Note that the initial position argument is zero-based (i.e., the first character is referenced via a "0").

 {(substr "PmWiki" 2 3)}
 {(substr "PmWiki" 2)}
 {(substr "PmWiki" 0 1)}

 Wik
 Wiki
 P

ftime-

"Ftime" expressions are used for date and time formatting. The generic form is

where fmt is a formatting string and when is the time to be formatted. The arguments can be in either order and may use the optional "fmt=" and "when=" labels.

Examples:

 {(ftime fmt="%F %H:%M")}
 {(ftime %Y)}
 {(ftime fmt=%F)}
 {(ftime yesterday)}
 {(ftime when=tomorrow)}
 {(ftime %F yesterday)}
 {(ftime week %F)}
 {(ftime fmt=%F month)}

 2025-05-30 21:16
 2025
 2025-05-30
 May 29, 2025, at 12:00 AM EST
 May 31, 2025, at 12:00 AM EST
 2025-05-29
 1970-01-01
 1970-01-01

The fmt parameter is whatever is given by "fmt=", the first parameter containing a '%', or else the site's default. The formatting codes are described at http://www.php.net/strftime. Some common formatting strings:

     %F                # ISO-8601 dates      "2025-05-30"
     %H:%M:%S          # time as hh:mm:ss    "21:16:03"
     %m/%d/%Y          # date as mm/dd/yyyy  "05/30/2025"
     "%A, %B %d, %Y"   # in words            "Friday, May 30, 2025"

The when parameter understands many different date formats. The when parameter is whatever is given by "when=", or whatever parameter remains after determining the format parameter. Some examples:

    2007-04-11            # ISO-8601 dates
    20070411              # dates without hyphens, slashes, or dots
    2007-03               # months
    @1176304315           # Unix timestamps (seconds since 1-Jan-1970 00:00 UTC)
    now                   # the current time
    today                 # today @ 00:00:00
    yesterday             # yesterday @ 00:00:00
    "next Monday"         # relative dates
    "last Thursday"       # relative dates
    "-3 days"             # three days ago
    "+2 weeks"            # two weeks from now
    "2007-04-11 -4 days"  # four days before April 11

The when parameter uses PHP's strtotime function to convert date strings according to the GNU date input formats; as of this writing it only understands English phrases in date specifications.

The variable $FTimeFmt can be used to override the default date format used by the "ftime" function. The default $FTimeFmt is $TimeFmt.

strlen-

The "strlen" expression returns the length of a string. The first argument is the string to be measured.

 {(strlen "{$:Summary}")}

 18

rand-

The "rand" expression returns a random integer. The first argument is the minimum number to be returned and the second argument is the maximum number to be returned. If called without the optional min, max arguments rand() returns a pseudo-random integer between 0 and RAND_MAX. If you want a random number between 5 and 15 (inclusive), for example, use rand (5, 15).

 {(rand)}

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toupper / tolower-

The "toupper" and "tolower" expressions convert a string into uppercase or lowercase. The first argument is the string to be processed.

 {(toupper "{$:Summary}")}
 {(tolower "{$:Summary}")}

 MARKUP EXPRESSIONS
 markup expressions

ucfirst-

The "ucfirst" expression converts the first character of a string to uppercase. The first argument is the string to be processed.

 {(ucfirst "{$:Summary}")}

 Markup expressions

ucwords-

The "ucwords" expression converts the first character of each word in a string to uppercase. The first argument is the string to be processed.

 {(ucwords "{$:Summary}")}

 Markup Expressions

pagename-

The "pagename" expression builds a pagename from a string. The first argument is the string to be processed.

asspaced-

The "asspaced" expression formats wikiwords. The first argument is the string to be processed.

Nesting expressions-

Markup expressions can be nested:

 {(tolower (substr "Hello World" 2))}

 llo world

Notes-

• Some of the string-processing markups may not work properly on UTF-8 characters or escaped sequences.

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