Extension:Semantic Result Formats/timeline and eventline formats

The result formats timeline and eventline, both part of the Semantic Result Formats extension, are used to display query results in interactive timelines. Obviously, only results that include properties of type Date can be displayed in this way. These formats require JavaScript to be enabled.

Example
Select the ten most recent news items:

You can see an example of the timeline format in action on the Conferences page on techpresentations.org.

Usage and parameters
The first result column is used for the label next to the point on the timeline, so using mainlabel=- as a parameter in the query results in the first printout statement being used as the label.

The timeline formats use printout statements in queries for properties of type 'Date'. If the timeline remains empty even though there are resutls, this is usually because no printouts for dates were specified. Timeline will normally use the first and optionally second date and display every result as a single point (one date given) or interval (two dates given). All other printout statements are shown in the tooltips that appear when clicking on items.

Eventline is similar, but displays all dates in the printout as separate points. For example, timeline will always assume that a second date is the end point of a single event starting with the first date. Additional dates in the printout are simply added to the popup. A query with five data printouts, i.e. the date a candidate obtained five different qualifications on their CV, would create five points on the timeline for each candidate. Different colors are used to maintain some visual hint of which points belong to which result. Again the tooltip shows all details.

The timeline and eventline formats introduce the following additional parameters:

Remarks
Page load times can be slowed down by timelines, especially if a large number of events is displayed. It is useful to use a smaller limit to keep the timeline more manageable for browsers.

Sorting results has no impact on the display of the timeline, since it always displays events chronologically. However, sorting can be very useful to select, e.g., the ten latest events instead of ten arbitrary events for display.