Module:category tree/documentation

This module is used for generating category boilerplate templates. It is not meant to be used directly. Rather, each template will have its own submodule, which handles the specifics of that template.

This documentation only covers the generics of the category tree system. If you are looking for documentation on a specific template, or on how to add or modify category information, see the documentation of that template.

Parameters
The category tree module is invoked as:

Every template that uses this module should have a submodule of this module with the name given in the template parameter. At present, only three such templates exist: The submodule should export a function named  which takes a single parameter: a table named   that contains the various parameters that were passed to the template initially. This function should return a new  object representing those parameters, or lua if the combination of parameters was not valid (i.e. no such category exists).
 * uses Module:category tree/poscatboiler
 * uses Module:category tree/topic cat
 * uses Module:category tree/ws topic cat

General workings
The module is based on the principle of two main kinds of category:

Basic categories belong to a specific language (or similar) and are the "regular" categories. Examples are: Category:English nouns, Category:French templates, Category:nl:Linguistics, Category:English terms derived from Japanese, Category:Latin script characters.

Umbrella categories do not have a code, but contain all basic categories of their label, one for each code. These are the "by language" type categories. Examples are: Category:Nouns by language, Category:Templates by language, Category:Linguistics, Category:Terms derived from Japanese, Category:Characters by script.

Some templates also distinguish a third type of category, the fundamental category. This category is used as the parent category for umbrella categories.

Category objects
Category objects are returned by each submodule's  function. They represent a single category in the tree. A category object has a variety of methods which may be called on it to ask for information about the category.

getBreadcrumbName
lua

Returns the name that is used for the category in the "breadcrumbs" at the top of the category page.

getDataModule
lua

Returns the name of the module which contains the data for this category. This is used to create an "edit" link on the category, which allows users to find and edit the information more easily.

canBeEmpty
lua

Returns lua either if the category contains pages but might be empty or if the category only contains categories, otherwise returns lua.

getCategoryName
lua

Returns the name of the category that this category object represents.

getDescription
lua

Returns the description text that is shown at the top of the category page. If the category has no description, this returns lua.

getParents
lua

Returns a table of the parent categories of this category. Each element in the table is a table itself, with two elements:


 * lua
 * One of two possibilities: An category object representing the parent category, or a string that directly specifies the name of the parent category.


 * lua
 * The sorting key that should be used when categorizing the current category in the parent.

If the category has no parents, this returns lua.

If there are two or more parent categories, the first will be used to generate the breadcrumbs that are displayed at the top of the category page. For example, Category:English language is in numerous categories (All languages, West Germanic languages, Latin script languages, Braille script languages, and so on), but the first category, All languages, is the one displayed in the breadcrumbs:.

getChildren
lua

Returns a table of the child categories of this category. Each element in the table is a category object representing the child category. If the category has no children, this returns lua.

getUmbrella
lua

Returns a category object for the current category's corresponding umbrella category. If the current category is already an umbrella category, this returns lua. It also returns lua if the category has no umbrella category.

getAppendix
lua

Returns an appendix link (such as Appendix:French verbs) if the page exists, else returns lua.

getTOCTemplateName
lua

Returns the title for a template used as table of contents with the namespace prefix.

The table of contents is designed for categories with terms in a certain language, The TOC template should be a small, one-line template; a larger template will be used if available with the suffix /full. For example, if getTOCTemplateName returns Template:en-categoryTOC, will be used as the small table of contents template (for categories with more than 200 but less than 2500 entries) and  as the full table of contents template (for categories with more than 2500 entries).

If the function returns lua, no such template will be used.