[Labs-l] Labs newb

[Ricordisamoa]

Il 06/04/2015 08:27, Golden Ring ha scritto:
> On 6 April 2015 at 14:03, Ricordisamoa <ricordisamoa at openmailbox.org 
> <mailto:ricordisamoa at openmailbox.org>> wrote:
>
>     Il 06/04/2015 02:18, Golden Ring ha scritto:
>>     I've been thinking recently about how to do recent changes patrol
>>     better.  I've prototyped a tool, which you can see at
>>     http://recent-changes.appspot.com/.
>
>     Nice. It reminds me of rech
>     <https://tools.wmflabs.org/pltools/rech/>...
>
>
> Yes, very similar concept.   Is there a reason that rech is wikidata only?

I guess that is because its author, Pasleim 
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Pasleim>, is mainly active there and 
didn't think it may have been useful to other projects. Or maybe it's 
supposed to implement some Wikidata-specific features in the future.

>>     This is currently implemented on Google AppEngine, basically
>>     becausethat's what I had to hand when I set out and already knew
>>     something about using.  It uses the MediaWiki API to retrieve diffs.
>>     This is not ideal for a few reasons, not least because it wouldn't
>>     take very heavy use of the tool before I'd have to start paying for
>>     it, which would probably mean putting ads on it.  I can't be dealing
>>     with all that.
>
>     I suppose the cost is related to Google charging for bandwidth use
>     beyond a threshold?
>     Since the app needs JavaScript anyway, you could simply retrieve
>     recent changes on the client, thus avoiding much of the
>     server-side traffic.
>
>
> Yes, Google charges for both CPU time and bandwidth use beyond the 
> free quota (1GB bandwidth either way + 28 instance-hours per day).
>
> Retrieving changes from the client side was what I attempted first, 
> but of course it has to be hosted somewhere, and unless that's on the 
> wiki concerned, then you have to deal with the cross-site nature of 
> the API requests.  My impression is that this requires the wiki to be 
> configured to explicitly allow requests from the domain serving the page.

Just pass dataType: "jsonp" to $.ajax(), it will magically work! 
(background <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Ajax#Limitations>)

>
> [snip]
>
>     Labs is precisely for external tools, and I'd say Tool Labs best
>     fits your needs.
>     To enhance MediaWiki's built-in patrolling functionality, you
>     should read this
>     <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker>
>     instead.
>     Use your judgement and common sense
>     <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-October/075137.html>
>     to decide whether it's better to develop your tool on Tool Labs or
>     as part of MediaWiki (either core or an extension).
>
>
> I'm not absolutely clear on the best choice here.   On one hand, I'd 
> like the tool to end up something like Special:NewPagesFeed 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:NewPagesFeed>. I guess this 
> points towards developing it as built-in mediawiki functionality, 
> rather than an external tool.  On the other hand, I've developed it 
> because I actually want to use it; my impression is that getting 
> changes into mediawiki, and then deployed onto en wikipedia, is not 
> easy.  Probably for pretty good reasons, but still not easy.

Only you know how your tool will look like :-)
Special:NewPagesFeed is provided by the PageTriage extension 
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:PageTriage>, so if your goal 
is to improve it or build upon it tightly, here you go.
If you're still undecided, I advise you to install MediaWiki+PageTriage 
on your device and have a look at the code while experimenting with Tool 
Labs.

>
> If I go down the external tool route, then I guess the tool gets 
> hosted at eg. tools.wmflabs.org <http://tools.wmflabs.org>; is that 
> right?  On the other hand, an external tool hosted there doesn't have 
> access to the production wikipedia databases and would have to 
> continue getting data through the mediawiki API; is that right?

#1: yes. Follow the links at tools.wmflabs.org 
<https://tools.wmflabs.org> to create a Labs account (if you don't have 
one yet), request access to the Tools project and create a new tool. It 
will be hosted at tools.wmflabs.org/<yourtoolname>.
#2: no. Tools accounts have access to replicas of the production 
databases with private data redacted: read Connecting to the database 
replicas 
<https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Tool_Labs/Database#Connecting_to_the_database_replicas> 
for access. However, some data are only exposed via the API, and (my 
understanding is that) databases are generally only used directly in 
performance-critical applications which benefit from the power of SQL.

>
> TBH I'm not sure I've got a lot of clue about the architecture of 
> MediaWiki; is it described anywhere, beyond, "It uses PHP, MySQL and 
> jQuery"?

It seems you're asking for the Developer hub 
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_hub>, though it may be hard to 
grasp for a 'newb' ;-)

>
> Sorry for having so many questions!

You're welcome!

>
> Regards,
> GoldenRing
>
>
>
>
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