wiki-plugin-rcntable

A table of records on a Federated Wiki page. The page shows the shape of the table — rows × columns, the column names as chips, the first few names as links — and an Open Table button that opens the whole table in a popup: sort, filter, select rows, compare them, follow one row into a drawing of what it is connected to (Neighbourhood), or put the selected rows on a map (Map). Every name is a link: click one and that subject's page opens in the lineup beside the table.

Install on a wiki server:

npm install -g wiki-plugin-rcntable

and restart the wiki. The Factory then offers RCN Table.

Make from a table on a page

An empty table item shows Make from…. It lists every table on its own page and the pages to its left in the lineup — html tables, markdown pipe tables, and data items — and fills itself in place from the one you pick. The rows ride inside the item, so Open Table needs no records folder (the popup takes them inline) and a fork carries them. The item records where it came from (made.from: site, page, item), how (converter, plugin version), when, and what the conversion dropped (made.lost: links in cells, merged cells, formatting), and shows that under the table. The source is never changed. The site still needs the three tool pages in /assets/rcn-table/. Design: docs/make-from/ in the rcn repo.

Where the rows come from

The popup reads a folder in the site's own assets: /assets/rcn-table/, holding the three tool pages and one exported database per subfolder. So each site is its own database — whoever owns the site keeps it, anyone who can read the page can read the table, and nothing talks to a database server. Two Assets items put it there: one whose text is rcn-table for the tool pages, one whose text is rcn-table/<database> for the record files. The record files can be made from a spreadsheet in the table itself (Open spreadsheet… → Publish records ↓) or from Neo4j with substrate/export.py in the rcn repository. A folder may carry a seal — a signed statement of who vouches for the records — which the table verifies in the browser.

Double-click the item to edit it; a line database: whatcom names the records, src: https://another-site/assets/rcn-table/whatcom/ reads another site's. Cmd-I in the editor opens the About page.

Part of the RCN toolset, CC BY 4.0 / MIT.