Extension:CookieWarning

MediaWiki extensions manual

CookieWarning Release status: stable
Implementation	User interface
Description	Adds a notice to the top of the page that informs the user, that this wiki uses cookies to operate.
Author(s)	Florian Schmidttalk, Liz Lee, Jack Phoenixtalk, Ostrzycieltalk
Latest version	0.3.0 (February 2021)
MediaWiki	1.35+
PHP	7.1+
License	MIT License
Download	Download extension Git [?]: Download Git master browse repository (GitHub) commit history repository contributors (GitHub) code review
Parameters $wgCookieWarningGeoIPLookup $wgCookieWarningGeoIPServiceURL $wgCookieWarningForCountryCodes $wgCookieWarningMoreUrl $wgCookieWarningEnabled
Hooks used BeforeInitialize BeforePageDisplay GetPreferences ResourceLoaderGetConfigVars SkinAfterContent
Quarterly downloads	42 (Ranked 88th)
Public wikis using	985 (Ranked 258th)
Translate the CookieWarning extension if it is available at translatewiki.net
Issues	Open tasks · Report a bug

The CookieWarning extension is a small and simple extension that adds a small but well-visible information banner to your wiki, which informs users that the wiki uses cookies to operate properly. The default message also includes a sentence that the user agrees to the wiki's use of cookies if they continue to use the wiki.

Background

In some countries, it is required by law (e.g., in the European Union) that you, as a website operator, ask your users for permission to use cookies with your website. In the EU, some of your partners may require you to ask your users to use cookies (e.g., because you use Google AdSense, which requires this notice). To make it easier for wiki administrators to implement these notices, this extension was created (by Florianschmidtwelzow, primarily for use on droidwiki.de).

History

This extension was merged with the former CookiePolicy extension, which provided a similar functionality and was originally written by Liz Lee for Wikia and further cleaned up and enhanced by Jack Phoenix for ShoutWiki .

Installation

• Download and move the extracted CookieWarning folder to your extensions/ directory.
  Developers and code contributors should install the extension from Git instead, using:cd extensions/
git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/mediawiki/extensions/CookieWarning
• Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php file:

  wfLoadExtension( 'CookieWarning' );
  

•  Done – Navigate to Special:Version on your wiki to verify that the extension is successfully installed.

Configuration

After the successful installation of CookieWarning, you need to enable it with the configuration option $wgCookieWarningEnabled, which you need to set to true in your LocalSettings.php. If you have a page explaining how you and your partners use cookies in your wiki, you may want to link to this page. For this, you can add another configuration option, $wgCookieWarningMoreUrl, which simply takes the URL of the page (full or relative, but relative may not work, if you use subpages in your wiki!). Alternatively, you can set [[MediaWiki:Cookiewarning-more-link]] to the URL of your site's privacy policy or similar page which explains about cookies.

Parameters

Some other configurations can help you to target the correct users with the cookie information bar. The following table contains all possible options.

Configuration	Default value	Description
$wgCookieWarningEnabled	false	You have to set this variable to true to make the extension work.
$wgCookieWarningMoreUrl	''	Set the URL to your 'More Information' page.
$wgCookieWarningGeoIPServiceURL	''	An IP location service takes the visitor's IP address and returns a JSON string that complies with the freegeoip.net schema (example). CAUTION: If the geo-targeting is enabled, the IP address of your users will be directly (NOT anonymized!) sent to the service configured in this option, which may be a problem in some countries or jurisdictions.
$wgCookieWarningGeoIPLookup	'none'	When and how do you want the wiki to try locating the user? Possible values: none - The geo-targeting is turned off, and the extension will not try to locate the user based on the IP address. php - The extension ships with a class that handles the request of the service configured in wgCookieWarningGeoIPServiceURL to locate the user. The request timeout is 2 seconds, so depending on your server's connection and the configured service's load, this may slow down the request for the user. However, locating the user will work even if the user has turned off JavaScript. js - The extension will ship a client-side JavaScript code to the user with each request, which will try to locate the user (again, using the service configured in $wgCookieWarningGeoIPServiceURL). The size of the shipped page will increase accordingly. However, the processing of the request does not depend on a third-party site anymore (like when using php).
$wgCookieWarningForCountryCodes	{ "EU": "Europe", "AD": "Andorra", "AL": "Albania", "AT": "Austria", "BA": "Bosnia and Herzegovina", "BE": "Belgium", "BG": "Bulgaria", "BY": "Belarus", "CH": "Switzerland", "CS": "Serbia and Montenegro", "CZ": "Czech Republic", "DE": "Germany", "DK": "Denmark", "EE": "Estonia", "ES": "Spain", "FI": "Finland", "FO": "Faroe Islands", "FR": "France", "FX": "France, Metropolitan", "GB": "United Kingdom", "GI": "Gibraltar", "GR": "Greece", "HR": "Croatia", "HU": "Hungary", "IE": "Ireland", "IS": "Iceland", "IT": "Italy", "LI": "Liechtenstein", "LT": "Lithuania", "LU": "Luxembourg", "LV": "Latvia", "MC": "Monaco", "MD": "Moldova, Republic of", "MK": "Macedonia", "MT": "Malta", "NL": "Netherlands", "NO": "Norway", "PL": "Poland", "PT": "Portugal", "RO": "Romania", "SE": "Sweden", "SI": "Slovenia", "SJ": "Svalbard and Jan Mayen", "SK": "Slovakia", "SM": "San Marino", "UA": "Ukraine", "VA": "Holy See (Vatican City State)" }	The list of regions in which users should see the cookie notification bar.

System messages

If you would like to change the text of the messages shown, navigate to the following pages and adjust as required:

• "MediaWiki:Cookiewarning-info"
• "MediaWiki:Cookiewarning-moreinfo-label"
• "MediaWiki:Cookiewarning-more-link"
• "MediaWiki:Cookiewarning-ok-label"

Migrating from CookiePolicy extension

In October 2016, the CookiePolicy extension was merged into the CookieWarning extension, as both tried to solve the same problem. The following sections will give you the information on what you need to do to migrate CookiePolicy to CookieWarning.

[[MediaWiki:Cookie-policy-link]]

The [[MediaWiki:Cookie-policy-link]] interface message will be observed by CookieWarning, too, so you can use your customization of the message shown to the user with CookieWarning, too. However, as this is just for backward compatibility reasons, it is strongly recommended to change to the message [[MediaWiki:Cookiewarning-more-link]], e.g., by moving the page on your wiki, or using the configuration option $wgCookieWarningMoreUrl to configure the target link.

JavaScript based geo-targeting

The logic to locate a user used in CookiePolicy was merged into CookieWarning. However, you need to configure some things to enable it by setting the following options into your LocalSettings.php:

$wgCookieWarningEnabled = true;
$wgCookieWarningGeoIPLookup = 'js';

$wgCookiePolicyGeoIPServiceURL

The $wgCookiePolicyGeoIPServiceURL configuration option is named $wgCookieWarningGeoIPServiceURL in CookieWarning, you need to change it in your LocalSettings.php, if you use it.

See also

• Extension:CookieConsent - Provides a more intrusive but GDPR-compliant warning