[Mediawiki-l] BREAKING CHANGE: action=watch now requires token (and API requires token and POST)

[Krinkle]

Hi all,

As of MediaWiki 1.19 the action of watching or unwatching a page  
requires a
token [1]. A similar measure was taken during the development of 1.17  
for
the markpatrolled action, and the reason is the same: To prevent
third-party sites from executing write actions without the users'
permission.

The ApiWatch module must be posted and given a token. As with other
edittoken-based api actions, the token is salted but stays the same
throughout a session. Scripts may retrieve this token, as usual, through
the ApiQueryInfo (must be logged in, anon users don't have action-watch)
[4]

On a sidenote, recently the the mw.user.tokens resourceloader module [8]
has been created [9]. This, together with the mw.user.options module
introduced in 1.17, gadgets can do advanced actions without polling  
the API
for common data. If you script is ran from a wiki, you can get the  
tokens
from [5] this Map without an http request to the query info module. An
example has been made in the mediawiki.action.watch.ajax module [6].  
This
(un)watches through the API.

The actual change in the WatchAction class was made in r89545 [3].
The ApiWatch module was changed in r88522 [7].

--
Krinkle


[1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/27655 Require token for  
(un)watching pages

[2] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/29070 Add token to action=watch API

[3] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/89545

[4] http://yourdomain/w/api.php?action=query&prop=info&titles=Main+Page&intoken=watch

[5] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ResourceLoader/Default_modules#tokens

[6] http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/resources/mediawiki.action/mediawiki.action.watch.ajax.js?view=markup&pathrev=88554#l117

[7] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/88522

[8] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/29067 Expose user.tokens like we do  
user.options in ResourceLoader

[9] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/88553