Template:Anchor/sandbox

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This is the template sandbox page for Template:Anchor.
See also the companion subpage for test cases.

[edit] Usage

This template inserts one or more HTML anchors in a page at the location of its invocation, enabling direct #Links to this location.

Code  
Before{{Anchor/sandbox|Foo|Bar & Baz|Three}}After
Gives 
BeforeAfter

The template will handle up to 10 anchor names, but could very easily be extended to do twice or more. If you accidentally use more than 10 anchors, the template will output a bold error message to let you know about it instead of silently ignoring your extra anchors.

Anchor names shouldn't include characters "#" (hash), "|" (pipe) or "=" (equal). On the other hand, special characters such as " " (space), "," (comma), "&" (ampersand), etc. can be used directly both in anchors and links, because Wikipedia will process them automatically into a URL-acceptable format.

[edit] Linking

After that, you can have links sending directly to the line you marked:

  • With [[#Bar & Baz|link label]] when linking from the same page
  • With [[Article name#Bar & Baz|link label]] when linking from another page

[edit] Technical notes

  • The template is based on <SPAN ID="anchor" />
  • The final HTML page (as outputted by Wikipedia to the reader's browser) will have converted it to <SPAN ID="anchor"></SPAN> instead.
  • The more backward-compatible <A NAME="anchor" ID="anchor"></A> is used by Wikipedia's own headings but disabled for editors in the wikicode and thus not used here.