Generating tabular output (examples)

The following examples explain how to generate tabular output.

Single template value
Example:

Result:

Note: The  in   allows precise positioning of the column value, inside whatever formatting you want to apply.

Omit (automatic) 1st column
This selects articles in Category:Fruit examples, it includes the "grows" parameter value from "Fruit-Infobox" template. The  statement formats the table as "wikitable" and "sortable" and uses   in second position to omit the first (automatic) page column; the "grows" value now appears in the first column. With the first column left off,  corresponds 1:1 to the include statement, so the first column is styled green using   to position the value after the styling.

Note: If the page name is omitted, and one of the "grows" cells is empty (its page doesn't have a value for "grows" parameter), it appears as an empty row in the table.

Example:

Result:

Move page to 2nd column
This selects articles in Category:Fruit examples, it includes the "grows" parameter value from the "Fruit-Infobox" template, and the page name ( gives name with namespace, if applicable) which is linked, using   (page name without namespace) as the link text. The  statement formats the table, then uses   in the second position to omit the first (automatic) page column. With the page column omitted, the  formatting corresponds 1:1 to the include statement and the first column containing the "grows" parameter value is displayed using. The last column uses  position the value for bold formatting.

Note: Linking a page name can be done in an  statement, though magic words, parser functions, and other formatting needs to be done in the tablerow statement.

Example:

Result:

Move page to 2nd column and format
This selects articles in Category:Fruit examples, it includes the "grows" parameter value from "Fruit-Infobox" template, and the page (with namespace). The  statement uses   in second position to omit the (automatic) page column which makes the   value corresponds 1:1 to the include statement position. has no formatting set for the first column, so its content is displayed as-is from the "grows"  statement, and in the second column the page (and title) is linked with italic formatting applied.

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Multiple parameter values
Multiple template parameter values can be added, these can also be formatted in the  statement.

Example:

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#dplvar to move/duplicate parameters between columns
Example:

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Include multiple (different) template's values
This selects articles in Category:Fruit examples whose article names are automatically generated and placed in the first column. It then includes the "Fruit-Infobox" template "grows" parameter value in the second column, and the "Color" template's first (numbered parameter)  value in the third column. The  statement sets the table style and headings, the   statement's   values correspond 1:1 with the position of the include statement, and allows each cell to be styled (or variables, parser functions, or other DPL3 modules to be used). The last column reuses its value, to both set the font color and display the parameter value text itself.

Example:

Notes:
 * values can be reused in the same column.
 * allows the values of a column to be positioned precisely within whatever formatting is to be applied; otherwise, it simply carries the value down from the corresponding  column to its cell, if other formatted values need to appear in columns after it. Given values correspond to the   position, they can't be moved or used between columns, without the use of  (though surrogate templates can better achieve this same goal, allowing values to be used anywhere within the output they format).
 * Templates used multiple times on a page, have their values automatically grouped and listed under the same page line (the Apple page uses the " " template twice, so two color names appear), since these are grouped under the same page result, the color value  can only be used to set the style for text color once, which is why the "green" value is red and not green.
 * If you need the contents of templates reused on the same page to be displayed on separate lines, see the example of how this is done instead of   (by using a combination of ,  ,  , and   instead.

Result:

Single page section
This example includes the content of article's "Notes" section content, for pages in Category:Fruit examples that have a section named "Notes" (pages that don't contain this show no content for it). The sort order is set to descending using  to cause descending order sorting.

Note: If any page contains more than one included section, the page name will appear multiple times in the output with each section's contents (as can be seen below).

Example:

Result:

Multiple page sections
This example includes article's "Notes" and "More" page section contents, for pages in Category:Fruit examples that have these sections. The "More" section content is limited to 15 characters. The  statement has   for each value that allow for precise positioning of its contents in applied formatting (if any) or simply display the value if no formatting is needed. The second is section is formatted in italics, the output count also limited to 3 results.

Note: If any article contains more than one of any section, the page name will appear in the output the matching number of times the section appears. If farther sections are included, and these don't have multiple instances, their contents are displayed in both rows (it repeats, as can be observed below).

Example:

Result:

Dummy section trick
If a #dummy section is added in the include statement (and an empty corresponding column header is also added), this causes unique behavior when the article results contain multiple sections of the same name. The result is that rather than one line per section being output (along with the page name repeating as was the case in this example), the repeats are instead grouped together, each on a separate line, in one table row. The new lines from subsequent templates have been marked to begin in bold.

Note: Such a trick may not be visually appealing, the other method to achieving this ensures the first column does not repeat because it is specified in a statement, the the other columns can then be formatted and appear normally using a surrogate/phantom template as can be seen in multisecseparators (example 3).

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Single surrogate template
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Multiple surrogate templates
Multiple surrogates might be used only if you need to access parameter values from different templates used on the same page or set of pages; otherwise, it is generally better to use just one.

The below example selects pages in Category:Fruit examples, and the include statement uses two different surrogate (also known as phantom) templates to access values from two separate templates used on the result pages, and sets and formats the output for a single row (which is then re-applied to each row in the table). The first argument of the  statement sets the table styles, the next sets the name "Page" for the first column of values. (Remember, the first column of  output is automatically generated by DPL3 unless suppressed with   (in place of "Page"), it also can't be formatted unless suppressed; and, if omitted, the first surrogate template would need to supply and format the first column values.) After the "Page" table header in the example, the rest of the titles are set. The first surrogate template formats the first two columns of results (the "grows" and "image" parameters belong to the "Fruit-Infobox" template used on result pages), and the second surrogate formats the last column (the "color" value belongs to the "Color" template used on result pages).

Notes:
 * can be used to display the page name (with namespace) in any surrogate template (these are always passed by DPL3).
 * can be used to display the page name (without namespace) in any surrogate template (these are always passed by DPL3).
 * See for more information on surrogate templates.

Example-specific:
 * was used to display the "Fruit-Infobox" template "grows" (named) parameter value from the result pages (if it existed, left it blank if not).
 * was used to display the "Fruit-Infobox" template "image" (named) parameter value from the result pages (if it existed, left it blank if not).
 * was used to display the "Color" template (anonymous) parameter value from the result pages (if it existed, left it blank if not).
 * Since the "Color" template was used more than once on some pages, it formats each instance more than once.

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Combining parameter values, page sections, surrogates
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