How is wiki-to-print made?

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Revision as of 15:09, 22 August 2023 by Manetta (talk | contribs)
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Technically seen, wiki-to-print is a web application made with Flask, that can be installed on the same server as where the MediaWiki is installed, or on any other server that you can access with sudo rights.

In practice, it's a version of a DIY configuration and that glues different things together: it takes a wiki page and a stylesheet as input sources (using Python) and renders them into a HTML page (using Pandoc) and a PDF preview page (using Paged.js).

Code

The source code can be found at: https://git.vvvvvvaria.org/varia/wiki-to-print/.

The git repository contains the following files and folders: 

├── static/
├── templates/
├── Makefile
├── README.md
├── api.py
├── config.json 
├── config.py
├── requirements.txt
└── web-interface.py
  • static/: folder for static files used by flask (eg. css and js scripts)
  • templates/: folder for jinja templates used by flask
  • Makefile: script you can use to install or run the flask application
  • api.py: script with all the functions that are used by the flask application
  • config.json: config script for your wiki-to-print installation
  • config.py: script that binds config.json with web-interface.py
  • requirements.txt: list of software dependencies for wiki-to-print
  • web-interface.py: the flask application

To install wiki-to-print

  • make setup: makes a virtual environment and installs all the requirements
  • edit config.json

To run wiki-to-print

  • make local: runs the Flask application locally
  • make server: runs the Flask application remotely with Gunicorn, which we used to work with a subdirectory (we use https://cc.vvvvvvaria.org/wiki-to-print/ as the root of this Flask application)

Flask application

The Flask application is based around the following URLs/routes:

button URL/route Flask action
CSS https://cc.vvvvvvaria.org/wiki-to-print/static/Test.css renders PdfCSS:Test as CSS stylesheet
HTML https://cc.vvvvvvaria.org/wiki-to-print/html/Test renders Pdf:Test as HTML page, using PdfCSS:Test as CSS stylesheet
PDF https://cc.vvvvvvaria.org/wiki-to-print/pdf/Test renders Pdf:Test as PDF preview page (using Paged.js), using PdfCSS:Test as CSS stylesheet
Update text https://cc.vvvvvvaria.org/wiki-to-print/update/Test downloads all the text from Pdf:Test using the Mediawiki API and saves it to Test.json (in HTML)
Update Media https://cc.vvvvvvaria.org/wiki-to-print/update/Test?full=true downloads all the text + images from Pdf:Test using the Mediawiki API and saves them to ./static/images/

Special namespaces

Wiki-to-print uses the Pdf and PdfCSS namespace for these environments, which means that those wiki pages start with Pdf:.

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