Question

If I have a simple table on a MediaWiki page like this:

{|{{#vardefine:new|style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% gold;"}}
|- {{#var:new}}
| hi
|}

and I press Rich Editor to switch to FCKeditor, the table code will change to:

{|
|-
| hi
|}

(So #vardefine and #var are removed!)

I have the VariablesExtension installed.

How can I prevent this? I’m posting it here (SO) because I assume this is a problem which can be fixed using different code on the page. Note that if the code is not in a table, there is no problem.

Note: if there are no variables in the table, there is also no problem:

{|style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% gold;"
|-
| no variable
|}

Answer 1

I found the solution but it is a bit of a monster. You need to create a template and use it in the table. In this example, the third (and final) parameter defines the colour of the cells (previously defined by a variable in the table – now that variable has been moved to the template).

The template will look like this:

<!-- Get color for this row
-->{{#switch: {{{3|new}}}|
 | New
 | new
 | n = {{#vardefine:color|bgcolor=lightsalmon{{!}}}}
 | Open
 | open
 | o = {{#vardefine:color|bgcolor=khaki{{!}}}}
 | Closed
 | closed
 | c = {{#vardefine:color|bgcolor=lightgreen{{!}}}}
 | #default = {{#vardefine:color|bgcolor=gold{{!}}}}
}}<!-- Add color for each cell in the row -->
|-
| {{#var:color}}{{{1|parameter 1}}}
| {{#var:color}}{{{2|parameter 2}}} }}

The table will look like this:

{{template_name|parameter 1|parameter 2|parameter 3}}
{{template_name|parameter 1|parameter 2|parameter 3}}
{{template_name|parameter 1|parameter 2|parameter 3}}