01280: Provide an error message if pagelist cannot find fmt=#x

Summary: Provide an error message if pagelist cannot find fmt=#x
Created: 2012-02-07 04:17
Status: Open
Category: Feature
Assigned:
Priority: 32
Version: 2.2.36 and prior
OS: n/a

Description: If someone makes a mistake in naming their fmt or places their pagelist template in the wrong location, pmwiki fails silently. There is no way of determining whether the problem was caused by no pages matching the terms or whether the problem was caused by an incorrect specification of fmt.

For instance, if I have (:pagelist fmt=#mytemplate:) but my anchor is [[#mytmplate]] then my pagelist results in no output. Similarly if I mistakenly put my pagelist template in a wrong page or if I don't have read privilege on that page then my pagelist results in no output. There is no message to indicate why I received no output.

If fmt=#x is invalid it would be good if (:pagelist fmt=#x:) resulted in some sort of error message rather than a silent fail.

If there is concern that this would not be backwards compatible then perhaps there could be a variable $EnablePagelistFmtError.

Couldn't (shouldn't?) authors consider that when nothing is displayed, there is probably an error somewhere? At any rate, the message would be "there is probably an error somewhere". --Petko February 07, 2012, at 05:02 AM

Perhaps if the format doesn't not exist the pagelist markup should be displayed

simon July 23, 2015, at 04:09 AM