bringing nodelets out of the shed

[jdporter]

Thinking about how to blur the distinction between nodelets and regular nodes, so that you could, for example — theoretically — embed a regular node into your page like a nodelet, or — more practically — view a nodelet as a standalone ("regular") node.

Nodelets are special in the following ways:

• they have a designated "container", which is essentially HTML template code which gets wrapped around the nodelet's contents at display time;
• they have the concept of periodic updating, with caching of contents in between updates.
• they can be selectable for inclusion in your list of displayed nodelets.

Aside from that, they are essentially superdocs: documents which can contain code for performing various functions. There is no technical reason why a nodelet could not be viewed standalone, just like any other superdoc.

Therefore, as a proof of concept, I created nodelet view page, a displaypage which does exactly that. To try it, view any nodelet and add ;displaytype=view to the URL. For example, your XP Nodelet.

It works. However, there are obviously some caveats. For example, viewing your Free Nodelet in this way is likely to cause mayhem if you have any javascript going on in it.

Now, if we can get this code to be ready for prime time, I would recommend making this the default view for nodelets, and migrating the current default view into the viewcode htmlpage. That is:

1. rename nodelet display page as nodelet viewcode page, then
2. rename nodelet view page as nodelet display page.

Then a pmdev simply clicks on the "code" link which will appear at the top of the nodelet display page to get to a point where its code can be examined/patched.

One further kewlosity: add /bare/ to the path part of the URL to get a nifty little ticker-like form (html, not xml) of any given nodelet. Example: your XP Nodelet. (It's not really a ticker; it doesn't auto-refresh.)

I also have a patch (expandfreenodelet - (patch)) for embedding any given nodelet's contents into your Free Nodelet. I'd like to know if this might have potential problems. It seems like a cool idea to me.