Foswiki is an enterprise wiki, typically used to run a collaboration platform, knowledge base or

document management system A document management system (DMS) is usually a computerized system used to store, share, track and manage files or documents. Some systems include history tracking where a log of the various versions created and modified by different users is r ...

. Users can create wiki applications using the Topic Markup Language (TML), and developers can extend its functionality with

plugins Plug-in, plug in or plugin may refer to: * Plug-in (computing) is a software component that adds a specific feature to an existing computer program. ** Audio plug-in, adds audio signal processing features ** Photoshop plugin, a piece of software t ...

. The Foswiki project was launched in October 2008 when a dispute about the future direction of TWiki could not be settled, resulting in the decision of nearly all key TWiki contributors to fork. Since then the codebases have diverged significantly. However, Foswiki continues to maintain compatibility with content written for TWiki. Foswiki stands for "free and open source" wiki to emphasize its commitment to

open source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

. The project is governed by the Foswiki Association e.V, a volunteer run, non-profit foundation. The Foswiki website is seen by some as one of the more popular Perl-related websites based upon Alexa rankings of all websites in the world.

Features

Foswiki features an

open architecture Open architecture is a type of computer architecture or software architecture intended to make adding, upgrading, and swapping components with other computers easy. For example, the IBM PC, Amiga 500 and Apple IIe have an open architecture suppor ...

programmed and implemented in the

Perl Perl is a family of two High-level programming language, high-level, General-purpose programming language, general-purpose, Interpreter (computing), interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it ...

and

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

languages and runs on standard web servers such as Apache,

Nginx Nginx (pronounced "engine x" ) is a web server that can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache. The software was created by Igor Sysoev and publicly released in 2004. Nginx is free and open-source software ...

and lighttpd. With almost 70 contributors providing over 56,000 commits since its inception, the Foswiki team not only develops the code but also offers on-line support, including on IRC. Core features include a

TinyMCE TinyMCE is an online rich-text editor released as open-source software under the MIT License. It has the ability to convert HTML text area fields or other HTML elements to editor instances. TinyMCE is designed to easily integrate with JavaScri ...

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...

editor, built-in search engine, default text database, and skinnable user interface, as well as

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...

Atom Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons. Every solid, liquid, gas ...

feeds, e-mail support, and database interfaces to support scalable database solutions such as

MongoDB MongoDB is a source-available cross-platform document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database program, MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with optional schemas. MongoDB is developed by MongoDB Inc. and licensed under the Ser ...

and

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database ...

. Additional security-related features include an auditable

version control In software engineering, version control (also known as revision control, source control, or source code management) is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs, documents, large web sites, or other collections o ...

system, user authentication, an access control system, cross-site request forgery protection, and improved spam-prevention extensions.

Extensions

Users have contributed over 300 extensions. Most of these extensions have been developed by or for corporate users, and are maintained by developers and users, as documented in the individual extension histories. Extensions have been developed to link into

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases spa ...

s, create charts, tags, sort tables, write

spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in ce ...

s, create image gallery and

slideshow A slide show (slideshow) is a presentation of a series of still images ( slides) on a projection screen or electronic display device, typically in a prearranged sequence. The changes may be automatic and at regular intervals or they may be man ...

s, make

drawing Drawing is a visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface. The instruments used to make a drawing are pencils, crayons, pens with inks, brushes with paints, or combinations of these, and in more mod ...

s, write

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

s, plot graphs, interface to many different

authentication Authentication (from ''authentikos'', "real, genuine", from αὐθέντης ''authentes'', "author") is the act of proving an assertion, such as the identity of a computer system user. In contrast with identification, the act of indicat ...

schemes, including single sign-on, track

Extreme Programming Extreme programming (XP) is a software development methodology intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. As a type of agile software development,"Human Centred Technology Workshop 2006 ", 2006, P ...

projects, and others.

Application platform

Foswiki is a structured wiki that acts as an

application platform A computing platform or digital platform is an environment in which a piece of software is executed. It may be the hardware or the operating system (OS), even a web browser and associated application programming interfaces, or other underlying so ...

for web-based applications. Specifically it provides database-like manipulation of fields stored on pages, and offers a SQL-like query language to support the embedding reports in wiki pages. Wiki applications are often called situational applications because they are created ad-hoc by users for very specific needs. For example, users have built Foswiki applications that include call center status boards, to-do lists,

inventory Inventory (American English) or stock (British English) refers to the goods and materials that a business holds for the ultimate goal of resale, production or utilisation. Inventory management is a discipline primarily about specifying the sh ...

systems, employee handbooks, bug trackers,

applications, discussion forums, status reports with rollups and more.

User interface

The user interface is customizable through use of templates, themes and CSS. It includes support for

internationalization In economics, internationalization or internationalisation is the process of increasing involvement of enterprises in international markets, although there is no agreed definition of internationalization. Internationalization is a crucial strateg ...

, with support for multiple character sets, UTF-8 URLs etc. The English user interface has been translated by users into Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Klingon.

Deployment

Foswiki is expected to be used primarily at the workplace as a corporate wiki to coordinate team activities, track projects, implement

workflow A workflow consists of an orchestrated and repeatable pattern of activity, enabled by the systematic organization of resources into processes that transform materials, provide services, or process information. It can be depicted as a sequence ...

s and as an Intranet Wiki, for example in academia. Foswiki (among other components) was used in several research programs including

Data Integration Platform for Systems Biology Collaborations In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted. ...

, an interactive data integration platform supporting collaborative research projects, based on Foswiki, Solr/Lucene, and custom helper applications.

Implementation

Foswiki is implemented in Perl and JavaScript (using jQuery), though it can be used without JavaScript being enabled in the browser. By default, wiki pages are stored on the server in plain text files. Everything, including meta-data such as access control settings, are version controlled using RCS. RCS is optional since an all-Perl version control system is provided. Other server-side databases, such as MongoDB, are supported through use of extensions. Informal user reports suggest that Foswiki scales reasonably well even though it uses plain text files and no

relational database A relational database is a (most commonly digital) database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A system used to maintain relational databases is a relational database management system (RDBMS). Many relatio ...

to store page data, especially where load balancing and caching are used to improve performance.

Support

Foswiki is an entirely community-driven project, and has no controlling commercial interest behind it. User support is provided by the community, via the mechanisms of IRC and the main website.

History

Foswiki started life as a fork of the TWiki project. Since the fork it has been worked on continuously by a relatively large development team. Notable developments since the fork include adoption of the jQuery JavaScript user interface framework, interfacing to the MongoDB NoSQL database, interfacing to the Solr search system, page caching and a modified editing interface.

References

{{Use mdy dates, date=September 2012 Free software programmed in Perl Free software programmed in JavaScript Free wiki software Enterprise wikis Free content management systems Groupware Cross-platform software