Extension:MscGen

MediaWiki extensions manual - list

MscGen Release status: unknown
Implementation	Tag
Description	This extension allows to display Message Sequence Chart's.
Author(s)	Ruud Schramp
License	No license specified
Download	see below
Check usage (experimental)

MscGen extension allows to display Message Sequence Chart's. It allows to display message flows. Flowchart was my first attempt to include such in MediaWiki, but recently I found the neat tool from http://www.mcternan.me.uk/mscgen/index.html which had been inspired by graphViz.

The code needs some cleaning up, but works.

Installation

This code should be installed in extensions/MSC.php and then included in LocalSettings.php.
The Mscgen package must be installed. In the source below, update $wgMSCSettings->mscgenCommand = "/usr/bin/mscgen" with the path to the mscgen executable.

Source

<?php
# CoffMan (http://www.wickle.com) code adapted from EasyTimeline extension.
# To use, include this file from your LocalSettings.php
# To configure, set members of $wgGraphVizSettings after the inclusion
# July 2006, Ruud Schramp
# modified GraphViz extension to use mscgen
# http://www.mcternan.me.uk/mscgen/index.html

$wgExtensionCredits['parserhook'][] = array(
        'name' => 'MscGen',
        'author' => 'Ruud Schramp',
        'url' => 'http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MscGen',
        'description' => 'Allows to display Message Sequence Chart\'s',
);
 
class MSCSettings {
    var $mscgenCommand;
};
 
$wgMSCSettings = new MSCSettings;
$wgMSCSettings->mscgenCommand = "/usr/bin/mscgen";
 
$wgExtensionFunctions[] = "wfMSCExtension";
 
function wfMSCExtension() {
    global $wgParser;
    $wgParser->setHook( "mscgen", "renderMscGen" );
}
 
function renderMscGen( $timelinesrc ) {
    global $wgUploadDirectory, $wgUploadPath, $IP, $wgMSCSettings, $wgArticlePath, $wgTmpDirectory;
    $hash = md5( $timelinesrc );
    $dest = $wgUploadDirectory."/mscgen/";
    if ( ! is_dir( $dest ) ) { mkdir( $dest, 0777 ); }
    if ( ! is_dir( $wgTmpDirectory ) ) { mkdir( $wgTmpDirectory, 0777 ); }
 
    $fname = $dest . $hash;
//  echo $fname;
    if ( ! ( file_exists( $fname.".png" ) || file_exists( $fname.".err" ) ) ) {
        $handle = fopen($fname, "w");
        fwrite($handle, $timelinesrc);
        fclose($handle);
 
        $cmdline = wfEscapeShellArg( $wgMSCSettings->mscgenCommand) .
          " -T png -o " . wfEscapeShellArg( $fname. ".png") . " " .
          " -i " . wfEscapeShellArg( $fname ) . " 2>&1  >" . wfEscapeShellArg( $fname. ".err") . " && rm " . wfEscapeShellArg( $fname. ".err");
        $ret = `{$cmdline}`;
        #      echo $cmdline;
        #      exit;
        #      break;
        #      echo "ADIOS";
        if ($ret) unlink ( $fname. ".err");
 
        unlink($fname);
 
    }
 
    @$err=file_get_contents( $fname.".err" );
 
    if ( $err != "" ) {
        $err_esc=htmlentities($err); 
        $txt = "<div id=\"toc\"><tt>$err_esc</tt></div>";
    } else {
        $txt  = "<img usemap=\"#{$hash}\" src=\"{$wgUploadPath}/mscgen/{$hash}.png\">";
    }
    return $txt;
}

Conversion from Flowchart to Mscgen

You can use the following perl script to convert from flowchart to mscgen

 # program to convert <flowchart> </flowchart> to 
 # <mscgen> </mscgen>
 # author: shishir birmiwal
 # ref: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MscGen 
 #      http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Flowchart
 # method of use: 
 # put flowchart syntax text into a file, say flowchart.txt
 #  (don't forget to include <flowchart> </flowchart>)
 # call using
 #    '''perl -w flowchart2mscgen.pl flowchart.txt > mscgen.txt'''
 
 $inside_flowchart = 0;
 
 foreach $line (<>)
 {
   if ($line=~m/\<\s*flowchart\s*\>/ig)
   {
      $line=~s/:/,/g;
      chomp $line;
      $line.=";\n";
      $line=~s/\<\s*flowchart\s*\>/\<mscgen\>\nmsc\ \{\n\ \ \ /ig;
      $inside_flowchart = 1;
      print $line;
      $line="";
   }
 
   if ($line=~m/\<\s*\/flowchart\s*\>/ig)
   {
        $line=~s/\<\s*\/flowchart\s*\>/\}\n\<\/mscgen\>/ig;
        $inside_flowchart = 0;
   }
 
   if ($inside_flowchart == 1)
   {
        if ($line=~m/^\s*(.+)\s+(.+)\s+(.+)/g)
        {
            print "   $1->$2 \t[ label = \"$3\" ]; \n";
        }
   }
   else
   {
      print $line;
   }
 
 }

See also

• Extension:GraphViz — for other drawings (graphs)