Extension:Semantic Forms/Creating query forms

Forms can also be used for querying, as opposed to adding or editing data. To do so, use the 'Special:RunQuery' page, which displays a form in a manner similar to 'Special:FormEdit', but with no associated 'target page'. Instead, when the user submits the form by hitting the "Run query" button, they see what the template looks like when displayed with the values they entered. The template that the form uses should most likely contain one or more Semantic MediaWiki inline queries, to query data using values the user entered. You can see an example of a query form here.

The "Run query" button

By default, a button called "Run query" shows up at the bottom of forms if they are accessed via Special:RunQuery. You can change the location and text of this button, using the tag "{{{standard input|run query}}}" (or "{{{standard input|run query|label=...}}}", etc.) within the form definition. See Defining forms#"standard input" tag for more information.

Query form at top

If you add the parameter "query form at top" to the {{{info}}} tag, the query input field will show up at the top of the results page, instead of the bottom.

Creating links to query forms

Once a query form has been created, you can link to it using syntax that looks like this:

[[Special:RunQuery/<query form name>]]

However, the preferred solution, because it's easier and more powerful, is to use the #queryformlink parser function. A basic call to that function would look like:

{{#queryformlink:form=<query form name>}}

Here's the complete syntax of #queryformlink:

{{#queryformlink:form=|link text=|link type=|query string=|query string parameters|tooltip=|popup}}

These parameters are almost identical to the ones used by #formlink; for a full explanation of the parameters, see Using #formlink.

Embedding query forms

You can also embed a query form within another page. To do that, add the following in a page where you want the query form to appear:

{{Special:RunQuery/<query form name>}}

Preloading data in the query

In case query data needs to be pre-loaded, the 'Special:RunQuery' should follow the convention Special:RunQuery/form-name?template-name[item-name]=value, as in the example http://discoursedb.org/wiki/Special:RunQuery/Item_query?ItemQuerier[author]=Joe. (The construction [item-name] might cause a problem in connection with the wiki markup, and therefore [ and ] can be replaced with either %5B and %5D, or [ and ].)

You can also link to 'Special:RunQuery' where the query has already been run. To do that, just add "wpRunQuery=true" to the query string; see here for an example.

As before, the recommended way to link to such a page is with #queryformlink.