Help:Category format

Category format
Outputs the results in columns, with first letters as section headers, in the style of MediaWiki category pages.
Further Information
Provided by:	Semantic MediaWiki
Added:	1.4.3
Removed:	still supported
Requirements:	none
Format name:	category
Enabled? Indicates whether the result format is enabled by default upon installation of the respective extension.	yes
Authors:	David Loomer , Yaron Koren
Categories:	misc
Table of Contents

The result format category is used to format query results in the manner of MediaWiki's category pages.

Semantic MediaWiki 2.2.0Released on 9 May 2015 and compatible with MW 1.19.0 - 1.24.x. brought several improvements to this result format:

• It now adheres to MediaWiki's $wgCategoryCollation configuration parameter meaning that the sorting of the pages will be done according to the collation set for the wiki.1
• Also when adding the page's group headers the previously used "h3" element was replaced with a "div" element utilizing the same CSS properties. Thus these headers do no longer interfere with generation or suppression of tables of content e.g. with the __TOC__ or __NOTOC__ behavior switches.2
• The "named args" parameter was introduced allowing e.g. to change formatting

Semantic MediaWiki 2.3.0Released on 29 October 2015 and compatible with MW 1.19.0 - 1.25.x. introduced the ability for a responsive view, i.e. a view catering for mobile devices.3 To get the responsive view you have to set the "columns" parameter to "0". e.g. |columns=0.

The page sorting behavior of SMW and MW differ when it comes to pages containing the "DEFAULTSORT" magic word ({{DEFAULTSORT:sortkey}}) or not. When using this result format a page containing the mentioned magic word takes precedence when sorting before a page not containing it.4

Format specific parameters

Parameter	Aliases	Type	Default	Description
columns	-	whole number	3	The number of columns in which to display results
delim	-	text	empty	The delimiter
template	-	text	empty	A template to format the items with
userparam	-	text	empty	A parameter to pass to the template
named args	namedargs	yes/no	no	Name the arguments passed to the template

Since Semantic MediaWiki 3.2.0Released on 7 September 2020 and compatible with MW 1.31.0 - 1.35.x. it is also possible to use namedargs as an alias of named args as a parameter to enable named arguments.5

Example

{{#ask: 
 [[Category:City]]
 [[Located in::Germany]] 
 |format=category
}}

This produces the following output

B

• Berlin

C

• Cologne

F

• Frankfurt

M

• Munich

S

• Stuttgart

W

• Würzburg