Comments on: Extending Mediawiki

By: Malle

Malle — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:37:30 +0000

Iam trying to do some extensions in my mediawiki site. This details helped me lot.
Thank you for explaining the details very clearly.

Regards,
Malle

By: Stan James

Stan James — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 07:17:54 +0000

One thing that isn’t obvious: Database changes are not committed until the who PHP page finishes. So if you have a die() statement (or anything else that finishes processing the rest of the page) then your database statements will not take effect.

Also the $fname variable seems to be for debugging purposes only, to identify the function which is currently running. I can’t find any documentation to that effect, but it seems to be used that way in the source code.

By: John McDonnell

John McDonnell — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 13:11:45 +0000

The API is documented (sort of) in the file /includes/Database.php . Chet, you might be looking for the “query” function (I haven’t used this function directly myself).

By: Chet

Chet — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:53:26 +0000

Very helpful indeed. I realize the original post is now a bit old, but perhaps you still retain the information you used to accomplish this.

Is there an authoritative reference source for this API? Can you include a link please?

My select queries need to be a little more complicated than simple single-table fetches that the arrays of field names and where terms models. I presume the API permits more complicated queries, and probably has a function for precisely what I’m trying to do (externally retrieve the filesystem’s filename of the latest version of a given image file) and indeed probably most likely also has a function that takes straight SQL.

Links to references and sources always appreciated!

By: Steven She

Steven She — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 06:13:48 +0000

I’m currently trying to write an extension for MediaWiki, and this has helped me greatly. Thanks for the information!

By: MR

MR — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 12:53:07 +0000

Very useful information. I spent a lot of time looking on the MediaWiki site such a tutorial with no luck. Thanks for sharing.

By: Joshua Gerrish

Joshua Gerrish — Tue, 08 May 2007 07:18:28 +0000

Hey, great article. I’m writing an extension for MediaWiki right now, and I was looking for some samples on interfacing with the database. This is perfect.

By: ke

ke — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 19:00:36 +0000

Thanks a lot! This entry has really helped me.

By: Karen

Karen — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 14:38:17 +0000

Using a wiki for documentation isn’t necessarily a bad thing. What you are seeing with the lack of documentation isn’t a result of the technology. In my opinion things go wrong when people don’t contribute enough information so that all portions of functionality are covered thoroughly. The ideal of having documentation maintained by a large user group is a good one. However, someone need to take responsibility for seeing that the salient information is documented. So anything that is a critical part of the generated codebase should be documented in normal language in the wiki document.

By: KRL

KRL — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 13:37:40 +0000

I have also been frustrated by the documentation for MediaWiki in my efforts to customize and extend it for use at the company at which I’m currently working.

The ironic part is that the documentation has been assembled in a Wiki itself and I worry a little that this approach is not necessarily conducive to compiling a detailed manual which should have relevancy to different levels of expertise.