WyPyPlus

A personal wiki in 42 lines of code

WyPyPlus (pronounced "whippy plus") is a minimalist wiki server in 42 lines of code. It is an extension of wypy wiki written by Sean B. Palmer. The original project implements a wiki in just 11 lines of Python code, which is an amazing achievement. However, wypy wiki doesn't have many features I consider as essential.

You can use WyPyPlus as

A personal Wiki

A GetThingsDone system

A static site generator

A presentation tool

You will be amazed by how much you can do with a simple tool

Only 42 lines of Python code.

Run on Mac, Linux and Windows.

Support the basic wiki syntax. DemoPage

Save plain text files under the /w folder.

To make your life easier

An example calendar and daily journal.

An example GetThingsDone guide to help you set up GTD quickly.

A template system to insert pre-defined content.

Full-text search.

A modernized and mobile-friendly look using Sakura CSS.

Delete a wiki page from disk by saving an empty content.

Each WikiPage has a reverse index. You can use this feature to group pages by tags.

An index page to show all your files in sorted order.

AutoSave after 30 minutes of editing.

Use INCLUDE(WikiPage) to include content from another page.

A built-in RPN calculator that supports +, -, *, / and sqrt.

(Optional) Syntax highlight with highlight.js.

(Optional) Display Ascii Math or LaTaX notations.

(Optional) Read-only mode.

(Optional) Include a GlobalMenu in every wiki page.

Text Formatting

WikiNames are replaced with internal links.

Markdown style **bold**.

"\n{{" starts an unordered list.

"\n* [text]" is a list item in an unordered list.

"\n}}" ends an unordered list.

"\n#" inserts H1.

"\n##" inserts H2.

"\n###" inserts H3.

To format code or text into its own distinct block, use triple back-ticks.

"---" creates an <hr> element.

Markdown style link and image tag

Use INCLUDE(WikiPage) at the begging of the line to include another file.

All HTML is replaced with its quoted equivalent (i.e. is forbidden).

Install and Use

You need Python 2 to run this application. Mac and Linux already have Python 2. For Windows users, please install Python 2.7.

Download WyPyPlus and extract it to a folder (E.g wypy_wiki).


cd wypy_wiki

python -m CGIHTTPServer 8000 

python3 -m http.server --cgi 8000 --bind 127.0.0.1

Open this url in your browser. It takes a few moments to start.
http://127.0.0.1:8000/cgi-bin/wypyplus.py

How to use the read-only mode

You can modify the edit variable in wypyplus.py. It holds the icon of the edit button. If you set it to an empty string, WyPyPlus will run in read-only mode.

In read-only mode, WyPyPlus

Will not generate the edit link.

Will not generate links for WikiWords when they don't exist.

Will not handle the POST method, which means that your data is read-only.

Will hide the search bar.

You can generate a static site using wget. The following command dumps the entire site.


wget \
     --recursive \
     --page-requisites \
     --html-extension \
     --convert-linksl\
     --no-parent \
         http://127.0.0.1:8000/cgi-bin/wypyplus.py

After that, you can create an index.html with the following content to redirect the index page to the cgi-bin folder.


<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0; url='cgi-bin/wypyplus.py.html'" />

How to create tags

You can create a tag by putting @ before a single word. Some examples are@HOME,@TODO, and@DONE. When you click a tag, WyPyPlus will find pages and content that match the tag. A speciall@All tag will match every page in the wiki.

How to define and use a template

You can create a template just like any other wiki page. A template name must start with "Tpl" and follow by three characters. WyPyPlus will automatically insert its content to a new wiki page when the first three characters of the page matches the template

For example, If you create a template page called TplJan, a new page called Jan23 will load the content from the template.