Feature Proposal: Add a Foswiki::Func::wikifyWebTopicName() API

Motivation

• Normalising user input the same way that Foswiki::Render does with [<nop>[freestyle text in lines]]
• We have a JS API, but no perl one. That's crazy.
• Where is this feature already

Description and Documentation

The simple goal is to make a Foswiki::Func::normalizeWebTopicName() equivalent which reproduces the exact behaviour that Foswiki::Render uses for normalizing text inside [<nop>[squabs]] as web.topic names, and in fact, both should be using the exact same code.

Examples

# Will try to convert the text in $topic into a valid topic name, upper-casing between words
# as Foswiki::Render does with [[squab links]].
# If there were no valid chars in $topic, return undef for $topic.
# Similarly for $web.
my ($web, $topic) = ('SomeDefaultWeb', 'some ! cr$@(#zy3yy text');
($web, $topic) = Foswiki::Func::wikifyWebTopicName($web, $topic);

Impact

Implementation

-- Contributors: PaulHarvey - 14 Dec 2011

See Tasks.Item11356

-- PaulHarvey - 14 Dec 2011

Discussion

Tricky. For compatibility, squabs have various undocumented or barely documented behaviours - such as treating the first space differently. Principle is good, though.

Where do you see this being used?

Raising a concern until behaviour is fully described.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 14 Dec 2011

Also need a %MACRO to expose this functionality, see TrimAllSpaces

-- PaulHarvey - 23 Feb 2012