Dear Sir or Madam,
I am not sure to which person or list I should address this question to.
0) Objective
I am in the process of building DEB packages for: WP-MIRROR 0.7, the latest development version of MediaWiki 1.23, and a set of MediaWiki extensions.
The objective is to this: That a page rendered by a mirror should look the same a that page rendered by the WMF site.
1) Problem
In the process of testing mirrors, I noticed that many templates were not expanding, and instead being rendered as red-links.
2) Example
To illustrate, consider the Ndash template, which appears on many pages such as http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/August. It appears in the underlying database:
mysql> select page_id,page_title,rev_len,old_text from simplewiki.page,simplewiki.revision,simplewiki.text where page_id=rev_page and rev_text_id=old_id and page_title like 'Template:Ndash' limit 10\G *************************** 1. row *************************** page_id: 132985 page_title: Template:Ndash rev_len: 65 old_text: –<noinclude> [[Category:Formatting templates]] </noinclude> 1 row in set (0.25 sec)
3) Special:ExpandTemplates
To test the above example ``Template:Ndash'', I use Special:ExpandTemplates.
3.1) Input text
Today is the {{CURRENTDAY}} day.</br> This server is {{SERVER}}, script path {{SCRIPTPATH}}, current MW version {{CURRENTVERSION}}.</br> This site is {{SITENAME}}. Full page name is {{FULLPAGENAME}}.</br> <table> <tr><th>Template</th><th>Expanded</th><th>page_id</th><th>rev_len</th></tr> <tr><td>Ndash</td><td>{{Ndash}}</td><td>{{PAGEID: Ndash}}</td><td>{{PAGESIZE: Ndash}}</td></tr> <tr><td>Template:Ndash</td><td>{{Template:Ndash}}</td> <td>{{PAGEID: Template:Ndash}}</td><td>{{PAGESIZE: Template:Ndash}}</td></tr> <tr><td>Template:Template:Ndash</td><td>{{Template:Template:Ndash}}</td> <td>{{PAGEID: Template:Template:Ndash}}</td><td>{{PAGESIZE: Template:Template:Ndash}}</td></tr> </table>
3.2) http://simple.wikipedia.site/wiki/Special:ExpandTemplates Preview
Here is the result from the WMF site:
Today is the 21 day. This server is //simple.wikipedia.org, script path /w, current MW version 1.23wmf14 (f8b9201). This site is Wikipedia. Full page name is My template. Template Expanded page_id rev_len Ndash – 0 0 Template:Ndash – 132985 65 Template:Template:Ndash Template:Template:Ndash 0 0
Both {{Ndash}} and {{Template:Ndash}} expand as expected.
3.3) http://simple.wikipedia.site/wiki/Special:ExpandTemplates Preview
Here is the result from the mirrored site:
Today is the 21 day. This server is http://simple.wikipedia.site, script path /w, current MW version 1.23alpha. This site is simplewiki. Full page name is My template. Template Expanded page_id rev_len Ndash Template:Ndash 0 0 Template:Ndash Template:Ndash 0 0 Template:Template:Ndash – 132985 65
Only {{Template:Template:Ndash}} expands!
4) Question
Why do I need to prepend an extra ``Template:'' to make the templates work for the mirror?
Better yet: Could someone tell me where in the MediaWiki core I can find the code that takes the template (e.g. {{Ndash}} or {{Template:Ndash}}) and converts it into an SQL query that SELECTs the template expansion from the underlying database?
Sincerely Yours, Kent