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And how for something very different…

A couple of days ago i was looking for JavaScript code which can parse the Google Code wiki syntax reasonably well. i stumbled upon (via a link in a bug report) some code by Fabien Ménager which did most of the work. After coming across a few too many corner cases, i sat down to re-implement the parser using a char-by-char scan, rather than regexes, for most of the work.

It’s now about 20 hours after that work started, i haven’t slept in 26 hours, and Fabien and i now have:

• A reasonable parser (only missing a few markup features): http://code.google.com/p/wikiwym/
• An application to demo it: http://wikiwym.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/index.html
• And another application which allows the user to load arbitrary wiki pages from arbitrary Google Code-hosted projects and preview them in raw and HTML modes. That code can then be pasted back into the Google Code wiki editor when editing is finished: http://fossil.wanderinghorse.net/demos/wikiwym/

Basically, that last app provides an editor environment for people who edit wiki pages of arbitrary Google Code projects. The app cannot save the data back to Google Code for you, but it provides a relatively effective interface for editing wiki markup. If you make a mistake while typing in the editor, for example forgetting to close an inlined markup tag (bold, italics, etc.), the preview mode will prominently mark the error so you know where to fix it (and what to fix).

If you’re looking for a wiki parser implementation in JavaScript, this one might just suit you. If you’re a parser guru and would like to help us improve the parser, then please get in touch!

Happy hacking!

—– stephan beal