Expressions

Expressions is a Movable Type (MT) plugin designed to be used by plugin developers. The plugin provides a method that allows plugins to support the use of Movable Type tag expressions in their tag attributes. When a plugin is using Expressions, MT tags like the following are allowed:

<MTFoo bar="[MTEntryBody encode_xml="1"]">

Download

Expressions.zip

Installation

Copy Expressions.pm into a directory called MTPlugins inside your Movable Type extlib directory. If you don’t already have a MTPlugins directory, create it first.

Your installation should look like this:
mtdirectory/extlib/MTPlugins/Expressions.pm

Usage

Unless you are developing plugins, you won’t find this plugin very useful. It doesn’t add any new tags. It doesn’t make your copy of MT do anything interesting. All it does is gives plugin authors an easy way to support tag expressions in their plugins.

If you are a plugin developer, well, that’s a different story. By using this plugin, you’ll find you sleep better at night, no longer get hangovers, and have the sudden urge to send me money by PayPal.

Okay, maybe not.

But you will be able to support tag expressions in your plugins.

To use, all you need to do is hand the plugin your MT object reference (commonly stored in $ctx) and your tag attributes (commonly stored in $args). The plugin will check all your attributes for tag expressions, run them through MT for processing, and hand them back to you, ready for use.

The plugin nesses with your token stash and your stashed builder object, so it’s very important to retreive these before you call this plugin. You can do that like so:

my $tokens = $ctx->stash('tokens');
my $builder = $ctx->stash('builder');
$args = MTPlugins::Expressions::process($ctx, $args);

Example

<MTMyPlugin input="[MTEntryTitle]">

Acknowledgements

This plugin was insired by an idea from Brad Choate. Brad also contributed a patch to MTAmazon that is now part of this plugin as well.

License

Like our other freeware, this plugin is released under the open-source MIT License. In plain English, that means you can do whatever you want with the software, including modifying it, selling it, or eating it, but we’re not responsible for anything that goes wrong. Read the license file included with the downloaded package for the complete license.

Revision History

1.0 - January 8, 2003
Initial release.

Nino
November 21, 2005 9:52 AM

Small adjustment needed…

MT versions up till 3.2 weren’t bothered by:

package MT::Plugin::Arithmetic;

MT3.2 is, as it should be

package MT::Plugins::Arithmetic;

Al
January 24, 2008 9:12 AM

In MT 3.3, there is no “MTPlugins” folder, but rather a “plugins” folder. Do I need to create an “MTPlugins” folder or can I get away with altering line 17 to:

“package MT::plugins::Expressions;”


Your comments:

Text only, no HTML. URLs will automatically be converted to links. Your email address is required, but it will not be displayed on the site.

Name:

Not your company or your SEO link. Comments without a real name will be deleted as spam.

Email: (not displayed)

If you don't feel comfortable giving me your real email address, don't expect me to feel comfortable publishing your comment.

Website (optional):

Lijit Search

Best Of

Recently Read

Get More

Subscribe | Archives

Recently

Thanks O'Reilly (Jun 29)
Captcha usability
BarCamp Sacramento today (Apr 26)
A short report from Barcamp Sacramento.
Barcamp Sacramento (Apr 16)
BarCamp is coming to Sacramento
Chrometa in Inc (Jan 14)
A local startup gets some national ink.
Scrum introduction (Jan 10)
Getting a handle on the Scrum project methodology.
Unfriendly returns (Dec 27)
Toys R Us blocks returns. You can bet I'll do all my shopping at a store with a friendlier return policy in the future.
The ongoing Comcast saga (Dec 27)
Using Twitter as a customer service tool.

Subscribe to this site's feed.

Elsewhere

Feed Crier
Get alerted by IM when your favorite web sites and feeds are updated.
SacStarts
The Sacramento technology startup community.
Pinewood Freak
Pinewood Derby tips and tricks
Del.icio.us
My tagstream at del.icio.us.
Waddlespot
My son's Club Penguin community. News, blogs, tips, and tricks.

Contact

Adam Kalsey

Mobile: 916.600.2497

Email: adam AT kalsey.com

AIM or Skype: akalsey

Resume

PGP Key

©1999-2009 Adam Kalsey.
Content management by Movable Type.