Sounds like an awesome macro, but I'm all confused now as the 1.4 download links seem to be removed / broken?

This macro will need to be modified for 1.5 as it implements the Macro interface, which has changed. It's safer to extend BaseMacro.

There is a bug if you have arguments but want to use the current page as parent page:

{info:title=Tip Of The Day}
{include-random:nopanel=true|link=true|all=true}
{info}

This will try to get the children of the page '' (i. e. empty string) instead of using the current page. Of course the workaround is to name the current page as first argument.

I will not be working on this macro anymore.

If anyone wants to fix bugs or update this macro to make sure it works in confluence 1.5 (having it extend BaseMacro, as mentioned) then the source code is available! (see attachments)

Feel free to create new versions and add them to this page.

For the impatient (like me): I just finished the first version of the Include Random Macro based on the BaseMacro. I completely refactored the whole thing but in addition I wrote some JUnit tests so hopefully everything is fine (although not every part of the macro is tested yet). I still need to learn how to add sources to subversion and to the repository plugin but it will follow soon as well as an update for this page.

Download: macros-include-random-2.1.jar

Here is a short overview of what has visibly changed:

It is not required to set the parent page anymore if you want to set further properties.
You can use spaceKey as alternative to space. This is to get a syntax like the {include}-Macro
Now not only space but also page permissions are checked.
There is no limit anymore how many pages are tried if no excerpt has been found (new algorithm)
Path will no longer be printed bold
Link to included page will now be labelled "more"
Moved help to section "Confluence Content" (where also the include-macro resides)
Arguments in help sorted alphabetically
Path will now be printed with links.
new Argument: type=excerpt/page (default: excerpt) controls what is included.

changes
new features

Hi

Has the behaviour of this macro changed recently?

Specifically, it seems that hyperlinks are being stripped from the the text which is randomly included.

To explain, we have a page (named QandA) which has a half a dozen child pages.

Each child page has the basic format

{excerpt:hidden=true} [Name of the current page] {excerpt}
A whole bunch of text which is shown when this page is visited....

NB: the square brackets to make a link to the current page.

On our main pages, we use the code:
{include-random:QandA|space=spacename|nopanel|link=false}

So, the include-random macro picks a random child page, and shows the text within that page's {excerpt} macro.
Since this text also contains a hyperlink, if the user clicks on it, they go to the randomly picked child page.

I could be wrong, but I thought that that this used to work, and now it doesn't. We recently upgraded from 2.5.2 to 2.5.7, but I can't say for certain when I thought it definitely worked.

Currently, the random text is showing, but the hyperlink on it seems to be being stripped.
So it no longer works as a randomised teaser to a page.

cheers
Andy

In Confluence 2.5.7, it appears that excerpts that surround images do not work properly, resulting in an error message in the random macro. This is what has been working prior to the upgrade to 2.5.7:

{excerpt}[!download:Images^someimage.jpg!|A Page Name]{excerpt}

Now, this is the error that we get:

"include-random: Unable to find valid child page of page info:bottom left banner (no children, access denied or (if specified as content to render) excerpt missing.)."

Is this related to the links and Wiki markup problem described above? When the image is removed and plain text is used, there is no error message. Also, when the link on the image is removed, it still gives an error.

Is there another way to randomly retrieve and display a linked image?

Thanks, Hank.

Great macro. We use it to rotate user quotes - works really well.
There are some downsides however so I thought I'd mention it here:

• not possible to use macros such as {align:right} - it is ignored in the included excerpt (formatting symbols such as * _ work well)
• it is not possible to include a excerpt containing an !embeded image!. We were hoping to use it to rotate graphic product banners - unfortunately, we can't

It would be great if a future version allow all that.
Thanks for developing it!