Hacking Mediawiki

Jani Patokallio Hacking MediaWiki http://www.mediawiki.org/

MediaWiki/Wikimedia Wiki structure Wiki customisation Outline

Open-source (GPL) wiki engine software (uses LAMP) MediaWiki Wikimedia MediaWiki US foundation that runs a bunch of Wiki sites (Wikipedia etc.)

Pages
“ Page A”
“ Page B”
Tied together by...
Links: A-> B
Wiki structure

Special:WhatLinksHere (B-> A) Special:RecentChangesLinked (B-> C) Special:MostLinked Special:WantedPages Links Help:Links

Links Subpages Wiki structure

Automated breadcrumbs “up” A / B / C into A ← B ← C Subpages Help:Subpages

Links Subpages Namespaces Wiki structure

“ Front” page + talk page Main, Project, Help, add more... Template Category Special* Image, Media* MediaWiki* (* = pseudo namespace) Namespaces Help:Namespaces

Special:RecentChanges Special:SpecialPages Special pages Help:Special pages

Categories Help:Categories Group together pages

Links Subpages Namespaces Categories Templates Wiki structure

Page transclusion: {{foo}} <noinclude>, <includeonly>, {{subst:foo}} Parameters Templates Help:Templates

Special:ExpandTemplates

Look like {{CAPS TEMPLATES}} Especially used in templates - context. Time, revision related Stats! {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} {{NUMBEROFEDITS}} {{NUMBEROFUSERS}} {{PAGESINCATEGORY:Foo}} Magic words Help:Magic words

Special:ListGroupRights “ Anonymous”/IP editor User Admin (Sysop) Bureaucrat Bot User access levels Manual:User rights

In the box – configuration
MediaWiki: namespace
CSS
Outside the box – programming
Gadgets
Extensions
Bots (API)
Wiki customisation

“ System [interface] messages” Edit MediaWiki: pages to overrride defaults (sysops only) Search on Special:Allmessages to find the right message/page MediaWiki namespace Manual:System message

Users can customize their own view! MediaWiki:Common.css MediaWiki:Common.js Monobook skin: (same for others) MediaWiki:Monobook.css MediaWiki:Monobook.js Look & feel

Massively simplify user JS/CSS sharing: no more copying user subpages MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition -> New Preferences tab JS/CSS Gadgets Extension:Gadgets

MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition MediaWiki:Gadget-section-browsing-gadgets MediaWiki:Gadget-Navigation popups List of file names MediaWiki:Gadget-foo.js/css

Special:Preferences -> Gadgets

Make your edit box less scary: Gadget rec: wikEd http://enwp.org/WP:WIKED

The way to add random PHP code to extend MediaWiki's functionality ~1500 already available Quality varies widely Stick to those already live on Wikimedia projects... Extensions Manual:Extensions

Adds Editor, Reviewer user classes Page revisions must be approved before they go live to public Comments and quality flags for pages Being rolled out on Wikipedia now FlaggedRevs Extension:FlaggedRevs

When categories aren't enough... Semantic tags in content [[name::Melbourne]] [[place::city]] [[pop::3609734]] SQL-type queries across content {{#ask: [[place::city]] [[pop::>1000000]] | ?name }} Semantic Mediawiki semanticmediawiki.org

A “bot” is really just a script/program that connects to MediaWiki
Can do anything than a human can
Automatic running -> “bot”
Special flag can hide bot edits
Older bots used screen scraping
pymediawiki framework
Bots Help:Bots

HTTP-based interface for (almost) all MediaWiki operations
Flexible, tested and doesn't break every time the Wiki skin changes
Wide range of language libraries
Ruby support pretty poor though...
MediaWiki API mediawiki.org/wiki/API

Query (XML) Parse (= render as HTML) Edit, delete, move Bulk import, export (again XML) API operations mediawiki.org/wiki/API

http://mediawiki.org is half-decent now Still lots of info on http://meta.wikimedia.org/ IRC is popular: irc://irc.freenode.net/mediawiki MLs: mediawiki-l Forum: http://mwusers.com/ (unofficial) Support

Questions? Jani Patokallio <jani@contentshare.sg> Original slides by Brianna Laugher <brianna@modernthings.org> These slides are dual-licensed GFDL1.2+, CC-BY-SA-3.0. Screenshots are GFDL/GPL, WMF logo is all rights reserved, MediaWiki logo is public domain. Thank you!

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Hacking Mediawiki

by Jani Patokallio

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