stars Plugin

Stars makes it easy to add a rating/difficulty system represented by a number of stars like 2.5 stars or 3/5 stars, etc. It has a simple markup and can handle whole and half stars.

It started as a different plugin called Skill, but it needed some changes suggested in the comments, and the author hadn’t done anything with the plugin since 2005 and didn’t respond to any emails wasn't interested in maintaining the plugin. Upgrades from the original plugin include:

• Star limit (10) by anon and kenc
• Span instead of div by anon
• New star images instead of using incompatible transparency styling
• Added css classes to enable external stylesheets
• Added the ability to show half stars
• Packaged to work with the DokuWiki plugin manager

Usage: [stars=num] where num

• is a number, e.g.: 5
• or a ratio¹⁾, e.g.:
  • Examples:
    • show 2 stars:[stars=2]
    • show 3/10 stars: [stars=3/10]
    • show 4.5/5 stars: [stars=4.5/5]

Search and install the plugin using the Extension Manager. Refer to Plugins on how to install plugins manually.

• stars_1.1.zip

• v. 1.1 – 2008-10-28
  • Bug fix for half stars
  • Changing the PNGs to GIFs to help our IE friends
  • Added an attempt at making relative paths that will work no matter how deep the calling page is.
  • Tweaked the alt text for the span itself to be more informative.

I found a few bugs in your otherwise nice plugin:

• Images don't load correctly, if the page is not in the document root. Change the links to absolute paths.
• If a page is rated half stars (eg. 3.5/5), one additional empty star is added. This is solved, if the line 114 ($i++) is uncommented.
• Your star images don't work well with IE (can't handle PNG transparency). Use GIF instead or non-transparent background (or no IE).

Here's a code-snippet with my updates, including improved alt text for the images:

function _Stars($d)
{
	$string="";
 
	// render full stars
	for($i=1; $i<=$d[0]; $i++)
		$string .= '<img class="starimage" src="/lib/plugins/stars/star.png" alt="' . $d[0] . '/' . $d[1] . ' stars"  />';
 
	// render half star if necessary
	if($i-.5 <= $d[0])
	{
		$string .= '<img class="halfstarimage" src="/lib/plugins/stars/halfstar.png" alt="' . $d[0] . '/' . $d[1] . ' stars"  />';
		$i++;
	} // end if($i-$d[0] > 0)
 
	for($i;$i<=$d[1];$i++)
		$string .= '<img class="emptystarimage" src="/lib/plugins/stars/emptystar.png" alt="' . $d[0] . '/' . $d[1] . ' stars" />';
 
	return $string;
} // end function _Stars($d)

— Martin Bast 2008/09/29 15:52

Thanks Martin. I've made changes addressing the items you brought up. Looking back at the code, I fixed the line 114 problem so it works correctly now. I added alt text to the span, not the images (your way would display '7/10 stars' 10 times in a row if the images didn't load). I also tried to solve the relative path problem for pages nested in deeper directories – I don't have a wiki set up that way though, so it isn't tested.
— Collin Green 2008/10/28 16:10

To display correctly the star images just change DOKU_PATH with DOKU_URL in lib/plugins/stars/syntax.php
— Frank Contrepois 2008/12/30 10:06

It would be awesome if people could vote how many stars they want to give and the number of stars given would automatically adjust.