Extension:FeaturedFeeds

MediaWiki extensions manual

FeaturedFeeds Release status: stable
Implementation	Data extraction, API , Hook
Description	Adds syndication feeds of wiki's featured content
Author(s)	Max Semenik (MaxSemtalk)
Latest version	continuous updates
MediaWiki	1.19+
PHP	5.4+
Database changes	No
License	WTFPL 2.0
Download	Download extension Git [?]: Download Git master browse repository (GitHub) commit history repository contributors (GitHub) code review CHANGELOG
Parameters $wgFeaturedFeedsDefaults $wgDisplayFeedsInSidebar $wgFeaturedFeeds
Hooks used BeforePageDisplay PageSaveComplete SidebarBeforeOutput
Hooks provided FeaturedFeeds::getFeeds
Quarterly downloads	8 (Ranked 121st)
Public wikis using	876 (Ranked 273rd)
Translate the FeaturedFeeds extension if it is available at translatewiki.net
Issues	Open tasks · Report a bug

FeaturedFeeds is an extension that creates daily feeds (Atom or RSS) of wiki's featured content (ranging from Featured Articles to Media of the Day).

The feeds are added to site's main page and are available via the featuredfeed API module. See also: Extension:FeaturedFeeds/WMF deployment

Using FeaturedFeeds

This extension requires that wikis use an automated process to publish their featured content daily (or at least very often).

Installation

• Download and move the extracted FeaturedFeeds 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/FeaturedFeeds
• Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php file:

  wfLoadExtension( 'FeaturedFeeds' );
  

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

Configuration

A wiki must have some means of caching set up to use FeaturedFeeds, or everything will be super slow.

Settings

Variable name	Description
$wgFeaturedFeeds	Contains array of feed definitions in the following format: 'feed name' => [ 'page' => <message name>, 'title' => <message name>, 'description' => <message name>, 'entryName' => <message name>, ] Mandatory items: 'page' Name of the interface message that contains an expression that evaluates to the title of the page with today's feed entry. For example, for English Wikipedia's featured articles feed it could contain Wikipedia:Today's featured article/{{#time:F j, Y}} that evaluates (using ParserFunctions, but ordinary date/time magic words may be used as well) to Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 8, 2024. This message always uses content language. 'title' Name of the interface message that contains feed title, for example "My Page of the Day Feed". 'description' A longer description of the feed, used for ‎<subtitle> Atom element, and ‎<description> RSS element. 'entryName' Name of the interface message that contains heading of feed's individual entries. Also see below for optional settings.
$wgFeaturedFeedsDefaults	Provides default values for some parameters of every feed from $wgFeaturedFeeds. Default value: [ 'limit' => 10, 'inUserLanguage' => false, ] 'limit' Maximum number of entries (ie number of days) in the feed. 'inUserLanguage' Whether user's preferred language should be honored by the feed. For example, it doesn't make much sense to have English Wikipedia's featured articles feed in languages other than English as the content is always in English anyway. But Commons' picture of the day feed contains images and their descriptions that are available in many languages, so it actually benefits from its description's localisation.
$wgDisplayFeedsInSidebar	Whether links to feeds should be displayed in sidebar on main page

On-site configuration

See the full subpage for details on the Wikimedia projects configuration

Message names

Each feed has the following messages controlling its behavior (replace * with feed name, chosen among those above):

Message	Description	Example
ffeed-*-page	Title of the page that contains day's featured content. Has one optional parameter, $1, which gets substituted with feed language code for use in multilingual feeds (currently, only on Commons).	Wikipedia:Today's featured article/{{#time:F j, Y}}
ffeed-*-title	Feed name	Wikipedia featured articles feed
ffeed-*-short-title	Short feed name, could be used on sidebar in the future	Featured articles
ffeed-*-desc	More lengthy feed description	Best articles on Wikipedia!!!
ffeed-*-entry	Title of each day's entry	{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}} Wikipedia featured article

How to set up a feed

Create a page named MediaWiki:Ffeed-*-page containing the page title (again, replace * with the feed's name). Two cases are possible here:

• The wiki has a new page for each day, e.g. Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 8, 2024 on the English Wikipedia. In such case, the title can use date and time magic words or #time parser functions to incorporate the date in the page title. The title in the example here is Wikipedia:Today's featured article/{{#time:F j, Y}}.
• The wiki uses a single template that uses date magic internally to display proper content. In such cases, either point MediaWiki:Ffeed-*-page to that template directly, or, if it has ‎<noinclude> sections not intended for readers to see, point it to a page that contains a transclusion of the said template and nothing else.

If you need to translate or tweak interface messages of a feed, do that before creating MediaWiki:Ffeed-*-page, otherwise your new feed might take up to one hour to catch up these changes.

How to publish feeds in the sidebar

Just create page MediaWiki:Ffeed-enable-sidebar-links with content other than a dash (-) or an empty string. A section called "Featured content feeds" will appear in the sidebar on the main page.

API module

www.mediawiki.org has no featured feeds, so the generated API documentation on this wiki is not very useful.

Instead, see the generated API documentation on enwiki, which lists the feeds it provides and has a working example.