Does anybody really use that Keyword field in MovableType for the intent it was made? I didn’t, however, I do like the concept of being able to add some meta information to my blog entries that I can then do clever things with.

Case in point… I wanted to be able to specify the width of the displayed text. If I didn’t do anything, I wanted the text in a thin, easier-to-read, column. If I added a second column or a cut-out box (containing a poem or something), then I didn’t want any width.

No problem. Now unless I add a ‘nowidth’ word to my keywords field, I set a default width:

<div class="blog"
  <MTIfNonEmpty tag="MTEntryKeywords">
  <MTElse>
     style="width: 450px"
  </MTElse>
  </MTIfNonEmpty>
  …

Later, I wanted to be able to add an Amazon ID value (effectively an ISBN) to the Keyword field and have every entry that had this value to have a picture of the book or CD and a link to it on Amazon’s web site. Easy enough once I added the MTAmazon plugin:

<MTIfNonEmpty tag="MTEntryKeywords">
  <MTAmazon search="[MTEntryKeywords]" method="Asin">
    <a href="<MTAmazonLink>">
      <img src="<MTAmazonMediumImage>" align="right" border="0">
    </a>
  </MTAmazon>
</MTIfNonEmpty>

So now if I add an Amazon book ID to the Keywords field, it assumes that I want a full width text box… which I may not want. What I want is the ability to add variables to the keyword field and access them in a MovableType template.

So I did what anyone else would do… I wrote a plugin.

With this plugin, I can have as many variables as I like. Something like the following could be added to the Keywords field for a particular entry:

amazon=0142003131 width=450

As you can see, variables are separated from their values by equal signs, and each variable-value pair is separated from one another by spaces. The value can be optional surrounded with quotes (in case the value contains spaces or equal signs). The quotes can either be double or single (if you want to embed a single quote, surround the value in double quotes). For instance, the following is a valid Keyword field content:

byline="That's not it." editor='marsha banks'

You access the value from one of these variables with the following code:

<MTKeywordVariable var="amazon">

Which inserts the value of the variable at the given location. Sometimes it would be nice to only do particular processing if a variable was defined, so we have:

<MTIfKeywordVariable var="amazon">
  Look at Amazon for ID:   <MTKeywordVariable var="amazon">
</MTIfKeywordVariable>

The MTIfKeywordVariable tag has a number of comparison arguments, like ‘equals’, ‘notequals’, ‘lessthan’, etc. For instance:

<MTIfKeywordVariable var="width" greaterthan="100">
  style="width: <MtKeywordVariable var='width'>px"
</MTIfKeywordVariable>

Now, let’s put everything together. My new Amazon code now looks like:

<MTIfKeywordVariable var="amazon">
  <MTAmazon search="[MTKeywordVariable var='amazon']" method="Asin">
    <a href="<MTAmazonLink>">
      <img src="<MTAmazonMediumImage>" align="right" border="0">
    </a>
  </MTAmazon> 
</MTIfKeywordVariable>

Installation

So, if you are still with me, first download KeywordVariable.pl.

Next, upload this file to your MovableType server and put it in the plugins directory (if it doesn’t exist, create the directory first). See MT’s plugin installation instructions.

Next, you need … wait, that is all there is. Just add your plethora of tags to your templates and rebuild.

Feedback

I realize that this is a trivial plugin, but if you put it to use, I’d be curious as to what you are doing with it.