[Wikitech-l] No autodetection in Mobile Frontend extension

[Daniel Friesen]

On Sat, 07 Jan 2012 03:13:21 -0800, Patrick Reilly <preilly at wikimedia.org>  
wrote:

> On Jan 7, 2012, at 2:21 AM, "Daniel Friesen" <lists at nadir-seen-fire.com>  
> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 07 Jan 2012 01:18:20 -0800, Quim Gil <quimgil at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi, I have installed the Mobile Frontend extension in my pet project
>>> at http://espiral.org
>>>
>>> I only get to the mobile view manually, through the link at the
>>> footer. Autodetection of mobile browsers doesn't seem to work or I
>>> have done / missed something in my installation. I have got feedback
>>> from a bunch of users with a bunch of devices, nobody got the mobile
>>> view by default and all of them get it when visiting
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org
>>>
>>> Something that looks different in my installation compared to
>>> Wikipedia's is the lack of a redirect to a ".m." URL. I'm actually a
>>> bit confused about this. It is mentioned briefly at
>>> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MobileFrontend but it is not
>>> clear to me whether this is something supposed to work automagically
>>> when installing the extension or whether there is something I need to
>>> do with the WURFL database, the LocalSettings.php, the web server...
>>>
>>> Other than this the extension works great presenting the mobile view
>>> of pages. Thank you very much for your work!
>>>
>>
>> I've been examining the MobileFrontend code myself since I too wanted to
>> use it on a wiki. The MobileFrontend code is written 'very' WMF centric
>> and uses a large number of hacks (which imho aren't acceptable of an
>> extension purporting to be usable outside of WMF). It's a long way away
>> from being usable on a normal wiki.
>
> How so? What would you change?

Well my list of what's wrong with the extension to start with:
- ExtMobileFrontend is made into an instance, yet self:: is used all over  
the extension, it's an instance yet not, static yet not...
- The extension relies on an X-Device set from a customized frontend cache  
despite the fact it already has device detection code in it. Plenty of  
wikis are not in front of front-end caches. (detection code if you're on  
the mobile site etc... should be grouped together into a common area and  
something like ->isMobile() should be used elsewhere)
- The WURFL config is messed up, defaulting to the expectation that  
memcached is running locally.
- It loads up the entire WURFL then does absolutely nothing with it.
- It doesn't detect the mobile server url on it's own (more frontend cache  
reliance)
- It uses a ill-conceved config for the mobile url '.m.' instead of  
something like $wgMobileServer = "//en.m.wikipedia.org"; this makes it  
non-portable to other patterns like say m.example.wiki.com.
- The code for converting a normal wiki url to a mobile site url is  
faulty. Horrid string replacements are used, code is duplicated everywhere  
when it should be common, and code like `$hostParts = explode( '.',  
$parsedUrl['host'] ); $parsedUrl['host'] = $hostParts[0] . $wgMobileDomain  
. $hostParts[1] . '.' . $hostParts[2];` mean that it'll completely screw  
up for .co.uk domains, third-level registered domains, wiki. subdomains,  
etc...
- It does everything using dom manipulation on the output causing a  
reliance on vector and monobook's skin structure making it break in some  
other skins. (It should implement a skin of it's own)
- It seams to make strange assumptions about the existence of a  
./w/mobileRedirect.php
- The login code seams to assume that every wiki has https:// with a  
proper ssl certificate instead of using $wgSecureLogin (besides the whole  
debate about MobileFrontend seemingly reimplementing things already in  
core or that should be in core)
- A number of mobile actions seam to be implemented by letting MediaWiki  
run through entirely wasting time doing things, then detecting that a  
mobileaction was used, discarding everything that was done and outputted,  
then outputting something else (btw: it's also using Article instead of  
WikiPage in one of those spots).
- Small note ->response()->header( 'Location: ' . $location ); should  
actually probably use OutputPage's redirect or something
- Also ->setcookie supports $domain and $prefix arguments, you shouldn't  
be fiddling around with globals
- Things like stripos( $_SERVER['HTTP_VIA'], '.wikimedia.org:3128' ) !==  
false ) { are hardcoded into it
- I spot a few places where urls are hardcoded instead of using Title
- I even see some hardcoded WMF stuff in the extension:  
$wgMobileFrontendLogo =  
'//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/W_logo_for_beta_test_of_Mobile_Frontend.gif';

The key things hurting portability are the reliance on front end caches  
with customizations, not detecting the mobile url properly, making bad  
replacements for the mobile url, and trying to hack things out of skin  
output.

>>
>> --
>> ~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://daniel.friesen.name]

-- 
~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://daniel.friesen.name]