The SavingMechanism is the mechanism by which TiddlyWiki generates a new HTML file and stores it. It is different from the sync mechanism, which is concerned with synchronising changes to individual tiddlers back to a server (see https://tiddlywiki.com/dev/#SyncAdaptorModules for more details).
The following steps are involved:
- The saver mechanism uses the filter defined in $:/config/SaverFilter to specify which modified tiddlers trigger the dirty state for the wiki. (The dirty state is reflected in the red colouring of the "save changes" button in the sidebar).
- The ButtonWidget is used to generate a tm-save-wiki message to trigger the save operation
- The optional parameter for the message specifies the template that will be used for generating the HTML file, defaulting to $:/core/save/all
- The plugin $:/plugins/tiddlywiki/tiddlyweb in the client-server configuration replaces the default template with $:/plugins/tiddlywiki/tiddlyweb/save/offline
- The template includes a variable assignment that specifies a filter to select the tiddlers that should be included in the saved file. It then transcludes the main page template
$:/core/templates/tiddlywiki5.html
- The template includes a reference to
$(publishFilter)$
that allows the filter to be customised via a global variable
- The template includes a reference to
- The tm-save-wiki handler renders the template to generate the HTML file
- The message handler chooses the highest priority "saver" module that can handle saving the file
- See https://tiddlywiki.com/dev/#Saver for more details