[Mediawiki-l] Date variables in MW do not refresh automagically

[Rowan Collins]

On 17/08/05, Mark Johnson <crvmp3 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I seem to only be able to make the purge option work for external links (or
> fully qualified links)? If I use a fully qualified url then MW marks it as
> an external link (even though it's not really) and since I tweaked the
> Links.php to always open external links in a new page this doesn't work the
> way that I would like it to.

As one of those in the "open in new window is evil" camp, I'm tempted
to say that serves you right ;) OTOH, perhaps you could add a
distinction to your hack to only mark "really really external links"
to open a new window, using some regex to spot when they were actually
on your own server or somesuch.

> Would it be possible to tweak MW to parse out the parameters after the '?'
> to so the the page is created correctly and then loaded correctly when
> called or would that cause a lot of heartburn, or do would you suggest to
> use a Template?

Rather than tweaking the way links work, wouldn't it make more sense
to tweak the way caching works in the first place? I mean, if you
insist on wanting pages that are never cached, the obvious hack is to
never cache them.

You could, for instance, use a hack somewhat related to those at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_extensions_FAQ to disable the
cache whenever a certain token was encountered (either the existing
variables, or some new MagicWord of your own invention; in the latter
case, it could actually *be* an extension, with no output).

> My current hack is to have a cron job running that updates the rows within
> the 'page' table for pages that I don't want cached with the current
> timestamp to fool MW into thinking the page has been touched.

OTOH, that seems about as sensible, in its way.

-- 
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]