Post Templates

[MoshiKoi]

Proof of concept that I made in an afternoon lol

Addresses https://meta.codidact.com/posts/276900

Templates are tied to a post type, so you can have templates for questions, answers, articles, help docs, and even templates for templates (probably not useful, but hey, why not).

Database changes:

• Adds a new field to posts, template_post_type_id
• Adds before_template_post_type_id and after_template_post_type_id to post_histories

Seed changes

• Creates a new PostType, PostTemplate
• Seeds a new default Category called Templates to create and edit templates. The default permission level is that everyone can view, but only moderators can edit
• Due to behavior changes (below), the sequence field of Q&A and Meta are now seeded as 1 and 2, respectively

Behavior changes

• Settings the "sequence" of a category to -1 will now hide the category.

Other

Trust Level only affects creating posts afaik, so users with the edit ability will still be able to edit these posts since by default, I let everyone be able to view the category. This is easily configured since it's just a normal category, so if you like, you can set the permissions however you want, and even lower it to let normal users create templates.

[ArtOfCode-]

More generally: I'm not sure that having a Templates category at the top of every page on the site is right - it almost feels too visible for something that won't be used that frequently. I like having it as a category, because it makes template admin familiar, but can we find a way to hide the Templates category from the top bar? Might need to add a field to the Category model. It'll still be linked from /categories, just not on every page.

[MoshiKoi]

You can now remove the category from the header by setting the sequence setting to null. Seeds have also been updated.

[MoshiKoi]

In terms of functionality, everything should be there, but the UI is really ugly; if anyone has any ideas how to improve it, please let me know.

Templates are a markdown tool which lists each template for the post type; clicking on the name will fill in the template, clicking on the info button will show the second modal with information about the template, including a link to the template post.

[cellio]

In terms of functionality, everything should be there, but the UI is really ugly; if anyone has any ideas how to improve it, please let me know.

Can you position the modal over the post editor (buttons + textbox), read-only with the "apply" action being more obvious?

What happens to text that's already in the editor when you apply a template? Does the template get inserted after (or before), are templates not available if there's text, or does existing text get clobbered? (Any but the last is ok with me, preferring an additive approach over disabling.)

[MoshiKoi]

Template content is inserted, not replaced (though apparently I forgot to push that change before going on my break from QPixel, whoops)

[cellio]

You can now remove the category from the header by setting the sequence setting to null. Seeds have also been updated.

Some existing categories don't set a value. Consider -1 or even 0 as opposed to null?

[MoshiKoi]

You can now remove the category from the header by setting the sequence setting to null. Seeds have also been updated.

Some existing categories don't set a value. Consider -1 or even 0 as opposed to null?

Was allowing existing categories to not have a value intentional behavior before this PR? If so, what was the expected behavior? I had assumed that categories not being seeded with values was a bug.

[cellio]

I believe the default is to show them in order of creation, and until a community needs something beyond Q&A and Meta, there was no reason to set explicit values. (Even then, IIRC correctly, some just set Meta to 99 and otherwise leave them blank.) For intent we'll have to ask @ArtOfCode- ; I'm just reporting what's in production. I don't have an objection to requiring categories to specify where they are in the sequence, but we'll need to add migrations for ones that don't have it set today.

[ArtOfCode-]

It was intentional to allow categories to not set the sequence value, if that helps - empty has so far been a valid value.

[MoshiKoi]

Ah, OK. If having it blank had well defined behavior, I'm fine with using -1 instead

[Taeir]

It seems impossible to select the templates post type as listed for a category since the old value remains in the redis cache forever. This may be a problem as editing the "Templates" category might clear templates from the listed values, as it was not a selectable value.

Perhaps we need to do something with seeds or after_create handlers to clear specific cache values and make things more robust to changes. Of course, post_types almost never change, but having behavior in the code to automatically deal with necessary cache invalidation for it should a new one be created would be useful. Not really something for this PR though.

[Taeir]

Since the title name of the template is important (it is shown to the user in the selection dropdown), it could be common to have duplicate names for different post types, e.g. "Default" both for Question and for Answer. However, after creation you cannot see in the list what post type it was for.

I suggest to add to /app/views/posts/_list.html.erb, line 36:

        <%= post.post_type.is_top_level ? post.title : post.parent.title %>
        <%= post.post_type.is_closeable && post.closed && !post.duplicate_post  ? "[closed]" : "" %>
        <%= post.duplicate_post && post.post_type.is_closeable && post.closed ? "[duplicate]" : "" %>
+       <%= post.post_type.name == 'PostTemplate' ? "[#{post.template_post_type.name}]" : "" %>
      <% end %>
    </div>
    <% if (SiteSetting['PostBodyListTruncateLength'] || 0) > 0 %>

Which will show up as follows in the list: