Template:Infobox/doc

This template is intended as a meta-template: a template used for constructing other templates. It is not meant for use directly in an article, but can be used on a one-off basis if required. See Help:Infobox for an introduction to infoboxes and information on how to design them. See Category:Infobox templates for specific infobox templates.

Usage
Usage is similar to, but with an additional distinction. Each row on the table can contain either a header, or a label/data pair, or just a data cell. These are mutually exclusive states so if you define a row with both a header and a label/data pair, the label/data pair is ignored.

To insert an image somewhere other than at the top of the infobox, or to insert freeform data, use a row with only a data field.

Number ranges
Row numbers may be from 1 to 80. To allow flexibility when the layout of an infobox is changed, it may be helpful when developing an infobox to use non-contiguous numbers for header and label/data rows. Parameters for new rows can then be inserted in future without having to renumber existing parameters. For example: |header3 = Section 1
 * label5  = Label A
 * data5   = Data B
 * label7  = Label C
 * data7   = Data C
 * header10 = Section 2
 * label12 = Label D
 * data12  = Data D

View/discuss/edit links

 * name
 * If this parameter is present, "view/discuss/edit" links will be added to the bottom of the infobox, pointing to the named template. You can use.


 * However this is rarely what you want, because it will send users clicking these links in an infobox in an article to the template code rather than the data in the infobox that they probably want to change.

Title
There are two different ways to put a title on an infobox. One contains the title inside the infobox's border, the other puts it on top as a caption. You can use both of them together if you like, or just one or the other, or even neither (though this is not recommended).
 * title : Text to put in the caption over top of the table.
 * above : Text to put within the uppermost cell of the table.

Optional content

 * subheader, subheader2 : additional title fields which fit between and.
 * image, image2 : images to display at the top of the template. Use full image syntax, for example example.png . Image is centered by default. See WP:ALT for more on alt text.
 * caption, caption2 : Text to put underneath the images.
 * header(n) : Text to use as a header in row n.
 * label(n): Text to use as a label in row n.
 * data(n): Text to display as data in row n.
 * below: Text to put in the bottom cell. The bottom cell is intended for footnotes, see-also, and other such information.
 * child: See the embedding section for details.

Note: for any given value for (n), not all combinations of parameters are permitted. The presence of a header(n) will cause the corresponding data(n)label(n) (and rowclass(n), see below) to be ignored; the absence of a data(n) will cause the corresponding label(n) to be ignored. Valid combinations for any single row are: See the rendering of header4, label4, and data4 in the examples section below.
 * header(n) class(n)
 * data(n) rowclass(n) class(n)
 * label(n) data(n) rowclass(n) class(n)

Optional CSS styling

 * bodystyle : Applies to the infobox table as a whole
 * titlestyle : Applies only to the title caption. Adding a background color is usually inadvisable since the text is rendered "outside" the infobox.
 * abovestyle : Applies only to the "above" cell at the top. The default style has font-size:large; since this cell is usually used for a title, if you want to use the above cell for regular-sized text include "font-size:medium;" in the abovestyle.
 * imagestyle : Applies to the cell the image is in. This includes the text of the image caption, but you should set text properties with captionstyle instead of imagestyle in case the caption is moved out of this cell in the future.
 * captionstyle : Applies to the text of the image caption.
 * headerstyle : Applies to all header cells
 * labelstyle : Applies to all label cells
 * datastyle : Applies to all data cells
 * belowstyle : Applies only to the below cell

HTML classes

 * bodyclass : This parameter is inserted into the "class" attribute for the infobox as a whole.
 * titleclass : This parameter is inserted into the "class" attribute for the infobox's title caption.
 * aboveclass : This parameter is inserted into the "class" attribute for the infobox's "above" cell.
 * aboverowclass : This parameter is inserted into the "class" attribute for the complete table row the "above" cell is on.
 * subheaderclass : This parameter is inserted into the "class" attribute for the infobox's subheader.
 * subheaderrowclass : This parameter is inserted into the "class" attribute for the complete table row the subheader is on.
 * imageclass : This parameter is inserted into the "class" attribute for the image.
 * imagerowclass1, imagerowclass2 : These parameters are inserted into the "class" attribute for the complete table row the respective images are on.
 * rowclass(n) : This parameter is inserted into the "class" attribute for the specified row including the label or other explanatory text.
 * class(n) : This parameter is inserted into the "class" attribute for the data cell of the specified row. If there's no data cell it has no effect.
 * belowclass : This parameter is inserted into the "class" attribute for the infobox's below cell.

Microformats
This template supports the addition of microformat information. This is done by adding "class" attributes to various data cells, indicating what kind of information is contained within. To flag an infobox as containing hCard information, for example, add the following parameter:


 * bodyclass = vcard

And for each row containing a data cell that's part of the vcard, add a corresponding class parameter:


 * class1 = fn
 * class2 = org
 * class3 = tel

...and so forth. "above" and "title" can also be given classes, since these are usually used to display the name of the subject of the infobox.

See WikiProject Microformats for more information on adding microformat information to Wikipedia, and for more information on microformats in general.

Italic titles
Titles of articles with infoboxes may be made italic, in line with WP:ITALICTITLE, by passing the  parameter.
 * Turn on italic titles by passing italic title from the infobox.
 * Turn off by default but allow some instances to be made italic by passing italic title
 * Do not make any titles italic by not passing the parameter at all.

Making fields optional
A row with a label but no data is not displayed. This allows for the easy creation of optional infobox content rows. To make a row optional use a parameter that defaults to an empty string, like so:


 * label5 = Population
 * data5 =

This way if an article doesn't define the population parameter in its infobox the row won't be displayed.

For more complex fields with pre-formated contents that would still be present even if the parameter wasn't set, you can wrap it all in an "#if" statement to make the whole thing vanish when the parameter is not used. For instance, the "#if" statement in the following example reads "#if:the parameter mass has been supplied |then display it, followed by 'kg'":


 * label6 = Mass
 * data6 =

For more on #if, see here.

You can also make headers optional in a similar way. If you want a header to appear only if one or more of the data fields that fall under it are filled, one could use the following pattern as an example of how to do it:



header1 will be shown if any of item_one, item_two, or item_three is defined. If none of the three parameters are defined the header won't be shown.

The trick to this is that the "if" returns false only if there is nothing whatsoever in the conditional section, so only if all three of item_one, item_two and item_three are undefined will the if statement fail.

Examples


Notice how when a label is defined without an accompanying data cell the row doesn't appear in the displayed infobox, and when a header is defined on the same row as a data cell all of them are displayed.

For this example, bodystyle &#0061; width:20em; and labelstyle &#0061; width:33%;



Embedding
One infobox template can be embedded into another using the child parameter. This feature can be used to create a modular infobox, or to create more well defined logical sections.



Full blank syntax
(Note: the template currently handles up to 80 rows; only 20 are included here since infoboxes larger than that will be relatively rare. Just extend the numbering as needed. The microformat "class" parameters are also omitted as they are not commonly used.)



Porting to other MediaWikis
The infobox template requires the tidy extension to be installed, and may not work with other MediaWikis. The WikiProject Transwiki has a version of Infobox that has been modified to work on other MediaWikis.