Hello

A page that used the Condition plugin to display a time‑based announcement behaved correctly on a local DokuWiki installation, but produced duplicated and cascading TOC entries when deployed on a shared hosting environment. The issue was reproducible only when the Condition plugin and an Include block were placed near the top of the page.

The root cause was a combination of:

• The Condition plugin’s TOC‑merging behavior in both XHTML and metadata modes
• The Include plugin creating implicit section boundaries
• A DokuWiki parser rule that no plugin block may appear between the page title and the first heading
• Differences in PHP 8 handling of the Condition plugin’s internal logic

After applying PHP 8 compatibility fixes and restructuring the page to avoid plugin blocks above the first heading, the TOC stabilized and the Condition plugin behaved consistently across environments.

• DokuWiki: current stable release
• PHP: 8.x
• Condition plugin: original Etienne Méleard version with local fixes
• Include plugin: standard
• Discussion plugin: enabled
• Hosting: shared hosting environment

The Condition plugin merges TOC arrays during rendering. When a Condition block appears before the first heading, the merge occurs before DokuWiki has established the page’s section structure. This results in duplicated or flattened TOC entries.

Local fixes applied:

• Guard against null TOC arrays
• Skip ``document_start`` and ``document_end`` instructions
• Safe metadata TOC merging
• Added PHP 8‑safe string offsets

The Include plugin introduces implicit section boundaries. When combined with Condition blocks above the first heading, this caused the parser to enter a “frozen heading state,” producing:

• duplicated top‑level headings
• cascading TOCs
• phantom sections

Wrapping the include with ``nosection`` prevents this.

DokuWiki cannot tolerate plugin blocks between the page title and the first heading.

Rule: Do not place Condition, Include, or WRAP blocks between the page title and the first heading.

This is a core parser behavior, not a plugin bug.

The Condition plugin’s ``time`` test accepts full date and time formats. A ``date`` test has been added locally and mirrors the same logic.

Examples:
<if date >= 2026-04-01>
Content visible on or after April 1, 2026.
</if>

<if date >= 2026-04-01 && date ⇐ 2026-04-20>
Content visible only during April 1–20, 2026.
</if>

<if date >= “2026-04-01 08:00” && date < “2026-04-01 17:00”>
Content visible during business hours on April 1.
</if>

• No plugin blocks above the first heading
• Wrap includes with ``nosection``
• Do not wrap headings inside Condition blocks
• Purge cache after modifying Condition logic (``?do=purge``)
• Avoid Condition blocks inside table cells

After applying the PHP 8 fixes, adding the ``date`` test, and restructuring the page to ensure no plugin blocks appear above the first heading, the TOC now renders correctly and the Condition plugin behaves consistently across environments.