[Mediawiki-l] Variables in Wikitext & Browser Caching

[Jamie Bliss]

On 6/14/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 13/06/05, Wolfe, Jeff <Jeff_Wolfe at intuit.com> wrote:
> > My original example was for a site variable.  Another good example
> > is a template.  I compared the behavior of the two inclusion techniques.
> > When I update a template, all articles that include the template are
> > rendered with the latest page.  In contrast, when a system variable changes,
> > the pages are not rendered with the latest content.  Is there anyway to get
> > the template's caching behavior with the variables?
> 
> Not really, because "global variable changed" is in most cases not a
> definable event in the same way that "template editted" is; nor, for
> that matter, is there any record of which pages use a given variable
> (though this would be relatively easy to implement). Basically, on
> editting a template triggers the following steps:
> 1) its parser cache is purged/updated
> 2) the database is searched for all pages including that template
> (actually, a schema limitation means that currently all pages *linking
> to it* are as well)
> 3) those pages have their parser caches purged
> 
> With something like "{{CURRENTDAY}}" it's not obvious what would
> trigger these steps; a cronjob on the server could, sort of, but only
> if the database was altered to store what pages used it, etc...

Oddly enough, when a page is reparsed (due to caching), category links
aren't updated, though by all logic they should. I mean, it's parsing
the page. Why shouldn't it update the categorylinks table while it's
making a list of categories?

-- Jamie
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