User:Mathglot/sandbox/Templates/xviews/doc

May be used to generate a bar chart showing page views for a given article or page from a downloaded pageviews file. Mock-up; see § Notes.

Usage

{{xviews}}
{{xviews|pageviews file}}

Parameters

There are three optional parameters:

• |1= – the pageviews file.(Default: {{SUBJECTPAGENAME}}; place on Talk page to get pageviews for the article.) See § Instructions.
• |ct= – the count of page view bars to display (optional; default: 92; max: 150.) Large values may cause failure, see § Notes.
• |stale= – number of days when a pageviews file becomes stale. Stale files will not generate a chart; a link to the § Update instructions is provided instead. (optional; default: 30).

Hooks are in place for additional parameters, not yet implemented:

• |log= – use logarithmic data points; ideal for spiky or highly variable page view data   (not implemented)
• |mode= – flips the chart from horizontal to vertical   (not implemented)

Examples

Example 1. page views for World War II

{{User:Mathglot/sandbox/Templates/xviews|Talk:World War II/pageviews}} ⟶ 08-0933736 08-1032225 08-1134465 08-1235534 08-1339437 08-1435940 08-1538934 08-1638556 08-1736567 08-1837899 08-1936839 08-2036865 08-2137017 08-2236587 08-2339083 08-2434952 08-2536737 08-2638184 08-2738015 08-2839310 08-2940619 08-3039062 08-3135067 09-0141079 09-0240119 09-0338349 09-0439603 09-0541882 09-0640143 09-0736894 09-0836204 09-0935095 09-1035071 09-1133643 09-1233589 09-1333271 09-1430611 09-1530813 09-1636690 09-1738373 09-1835163 09-1936988 09-2036970 09-2132145 09-2232695 │ 0 │ 4190 │ 8380 │ 12570 │ 16760 │ 20950 │ 25140 │ 29330 │ 33520 │ 37710 page views for World War II

Notes

This template is a mockup of a replacement for the non-working {{annual readership}} based on {{Graph:Chart}} which was withdrawn for security reasons. It is a proof of concept and if approved, is designed to be replaced by a Lua module.

Technical limitations

There are various limitations in the template which will disappear in a Lua version, such as reaching the PEIS limit if too many statistics are charted at once. The default value of param |ct= is a throttle to help avoid this. If there are a lot of other templates on the page, you may need do reduce the value of that parameter to stay within limits. See Help:Template limits.

Troubleshooting

• Chart does not display – some cases are recognized by the template and trapped with an error message; others are not.
  • recognized errors:
  1. missing file – if the pageviews file is missing, you should see a red error message.
  2. stale data – if the data in the pageviews file is older than the 'stale' age, then a message about stale data should be emitted.
  • unrecognized:
  1. template limits exceeded – if there is no chart and no error message, you may have exceeded one of the template limits. Try running it in preview mode; if PEIS is exceeded, you should see the message, Warning: Post-expand include size is too large. Some templates will not be included. in a pink box at the top. Try reducing the value of |ct= until it shows output in preview mode, then save it. Reducing the pagefile size will also help; the template reads and processes all the data (multiple times, which a module won't), and if your pagefile has a year's worth of data, you may only be able to display 30 days of it, whereas if you reduce it to three months of data, you can probably display all of it.

Instructions

This template requires a pageviews file in CSV format, which is expected to be available as a subpage of the article Talk page where the template is placed. Param 1 is available as an override, to point somewhere else. The pageviews file may be placed by bot, or manually by an editor.

Contents of the pageviews file may be downloaded manually from the pageviews tool. Request output in CSV format, and copy it to a Talk subpage whose subpagename is pageviews; e.g., Talk:Cleopatra/pageviews. A good amount of data to request is three months' worth. Any amount of data may be copied to the subpage, but the template will only display at most the last 150 lines in the file to avoid issues caused by technical limitations with templates.The template has to read the whole pageviews file even if less data is displayed, and long files may exceed some technical limitations and cause the template to fail; reducing the pageviews file size may permit more of it to be displayed, than when the total filesize is larger. Empirically, the optimal amount appears to be 90 or 100 days, for Talk pages with an average number of other templates on them. Some pages will show as many as 150 days' worth; rarely much more than that.

Performance

This is a mockup intended to be replaced in the short term by a Lua module, and ultimately by repair to the Graphs problem, so performance of the template isn't really a major issue. Check WP:Parser profiling data for performance data.

See also

• https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org
• WP:VPT Graph extension disabled
• T334940

Subtemplates:

xvmain, main loop that calls item bar once for each page view statistic in the file age, returns the age in days of the most recent statistic in the given pageviews file item bar, emits one progress bar-style graphic corresponding to a given line number of a pageviews file vbar, generates a single page views bar, currently horizontal only vbar/styles.css, TemplateStyles max views, return the maximum value from downloaded pageviews data. view count, return the count of page view statistics in downloaded pageviews data nth view, returns the nth view item (date:value) from downloaded pageviews data. xlabel, returns a normalized form of the date for bar identification; currently, just drops the year. x-axis, generates an x-axis legend with labeled tick marks for a horizontal page views chart