The <metatable> Tag

Metadata is usually embedded inside a content item using the <wmmeta> tag. However, sometimes you may want to tag a content item with metadata from outside, if the text of the content is not under your control; or you may want to tag metadata to an object that is not text-based, such as an image.

The metatable tag allows you to do this, and in bulk. You list a table of content names and the metadata you want to attach to each content item, in tab-, comma-, pipe-separated-value, or XML format.

By default, the table is read from between the <metatable> and </metatable> tags. However, if you set the src attribute, the table will be read from the location specified, instead.

Use the format attribute to specify whether the metatable is in XML (xml) or Delimiter-Separated-Value (csv) format.

Firstly, pick a delimiter character, such as |. Set the delimiter attribute to this character.

Next, the first line of the metatable lists the metadata you wish to set; it must start with the value .. This indicates to WebMake that it's defining the metadata to be set.

Finally, list as many lines of metadata as you like; the first value on the line is the name of the content item you wish to attach the metadata to. From then on, the other values on the line are the values of the metadata.

So, for example, consider this table, from the WebMake documentation:

<metatable delimiter="|">
.|title|abstract
Main.pm|HTML::WebMake::Main|module documentation
PerlCodeLibrary.pm|HTML::WebMake::PerlCodeLibrary|module documentation
Content.pm|HTML::WebMake::Content|module documentation
EtText2HTML.pm|Text::EtText::EtText2HTML|module documentation
HTML2EtText.pm|Text::EtText::HTML2EtText|module documentation
webmake|webmake(1)|script documentation
ettext2html|ettext2html(1)|script documentation
ethtml2text|ethtml2text(1)|script documentation
</metatable>

This will set Main.pm.title to HTML::WebMake::Main, Main.pm.abstract to module documentation, etc.

The XML block is surrounded with a <metaset> tag, and contains <target> blocks naming the content items the enclosed metadata items are associated with.

Inside the <target> blocks, <meta> tags name each metadatum, and enclose the metadatum's value.

        <metaset>
          <target id="foo.txt">
            <meta name="title">
              This is Foo.txt's title.
            </meta>
          </target>
        </metaset>

Using <metatable> To Tag Non-Content Items

Previously, WebMake required you to create phoney content items, in order to tag metadata onto images or other non-content items. This is no longer required. Just load the URLs of the items using a <media> tag, and each one will have a "phoney" content item created with the same name automatically.

Then use a metatable, as above, to set the metadata you wish to use.