User:DWalden (WMF)/WikiEditor/Insert link/State model
A state diagram representing some of the states of the WikiEditor's "Insert link" dialog, and how you can transition from one state to the next.[1]
States
[edit]"Internal link - empty"
[edit]The "default" view, when you first open the dialog in an edit session.
"External link - empty"
[edit]After selecting the radio button "To an external web page", but before you have entered anything in the input.
"Invalid input field 1"
[edit]- Validation is performed on your input and, if it is invalid, the dialog will show a validation message.
- Validation should only be done when you have the "To a wiki page" radio selected - i.e. you are entering an internal link.
"Internal link - Field 1 filled"
[edit]- The state after you have entered a valid page name.
- At this point, it performs a search for that page name on the wiki, and will show a dropdown of results.
- There is a short intermediate state while the dialog is waiting for results.
"External link - Field 1 filled"
[edit]The state after you have entered an external link.
"Search selected"
[edit]When you type in a page, it does a search for that page on the wiki. When you select one of the results, it might tell you something like "this link is a disambiguation page" or "this link does not exist on this wiki".
"Looks like internal"
[edit]If you enter an external link that is the full URL of the current wiki (e.g. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Page) and submit, it will open another dialog which will allow you to convert it into an internal link.
"Link not inserted"
[edit]- If you close the dialog without inserting a link.
- This saves the state of the dialog.
"Link inserted"
[edit]When you submit the dialog and it actually inserts the wikitext into the editor.
Notes
[edit]- There are at least two "broken" states which I have chosen not to represent in this diagram, just because they would make it much more complicated. These states have bugs associated with them: phab:T298549, phab:T297371.
References
[edit]- ↑ For more on using state diagrams in testing, see Hendrickson, Elisabeth (2013). Explore It! Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with Exploratory Testing. The Pragmatic Bookshelf. Chapter 8.