[[!template id=plugin name=album author="[[Simon_McVittie|smcv]]"]]
[[!template id=gitbranch branch=smcv/album author="[[Simon_McVittie|smcv]]"]]
[[!tag type/chrome]]
Available from [[smcv]]'s git repository, in the album branch
([[users/smcv/gallery|users/smcv/gallery]] contains some older
thoughts about this plugin).
This plugin formats a collection of images into a photo album,
in the same way as many websites: good examples include the
PHP application Gallery, Flickr,
and Facebook's Photos "application". I've called it album
to distinguish it from [[contrib/gallery|plugins/contrib/gallery]],
although gallery might well be a better name for this functionality.
The web UI I'm trying to achieve consists of one
HTML page of thumbnails
as an entry point to the album, where each thumbnail links to
a "viewer" HTML page
with a full size image, next/previous thumbnail links, and
[[plugins/comments]].
(The Summer of Code [[plugins/contrib/gallery]] plugin does the
next/previous UI in Javascript using Lightbox, which means that
individual photos can't be bookmarked in a meaningful way, and
the best it can do as a fallback for non-Javascript browsers
is to provide a direct link to the image.)
Writing the viewers
\[[!albumimage image=foo.jpg album=myalbum
title=...
caption=...
copyright=...
size=...
viewertemplate=...
]]
Each viewer contains one \[[!albumimage]] directive. This
sets the image filename, the album in which this image appears,
and an optional caption, and can override the size at which to
display the image and the viewertemplate to use to display the
image.
It can also have title, copyright and date parameters, which
are short-cuts for [[ikiwiki/directive/meta]] directives.
The viewer can also have any other content, but typically the
directive will be the only thing there.
Eventually, there will be a specialized CGI user interface to
edit all the photos of an album at once, upload a new photo
(which will attach the photo but also write out a viewer page
for it), or mark an already-uploaded photo as a member of an
album (which is done by writing out a viewer page for it).
The \[[!albumimage]] directive is replaced by an
[[ikiwiki/directive/img]], wrapped in some formatting using a
template (by default albumviewer.tmpl). The template can (and
should) also include "next photo", "previous photo" and
"up to gallery" links.
The next/previous links are themselves implemented by
[[inlining|ikiwiki/directive/inline]] the next or previous
photo, using a special template (by default albumnext.tmpl
or albumprev.tmpl), in archive/quick mode.
With hindsight, using an inline here is wrong - I should just
run hooks and fill in the template within the album plugin.
inline has some specialized functionality that's overkill
here, and its delayed HTML substitution breaks the ability
to have previous/up/next links both above and below the
photo, for instance. --[[smcv]]
Writing the album
The album contains one \[[!album]] directive. It may also
contain any number of \[[!albumsection]] directives, for
example the demo album linked above could look like:
\[[!album]]
<!-- replaced with one uncategorized photo -->
## Gamarra
\[[!albumsection filter="link(gamarra)"]]
<!-- all the Gamarra photos -->
## Smokescreen
\[[!albumsection filter="link(smokescreen)"]]
<!-- all the Smokescreen photos -->
...
The \[[!album]] directive is replaced by an
[[ikiwiki/directive/inline]] which automatically includes every
page that has an \[[!albumimage]] directive linking it to this
album, except those that will appear in an \[[!albumsection]].
The inline is in archive/quick mode, but includes some
extra information about the images, including file size and a
thumbnail (again, made using [[ikiwiki/directive/img]]). The
default template is albumitem.tmpl, which takes advantage
of these things.
Each \[[!albumsection]] is replaced by a similar inline, which
selects a subset of the photos in the album.
