Extension:Display Title

MediaWiki extensions manual
Display Title
Release status: stable
Implementation User interface, Parser function
Description Uses displaytitle page property in link text and talk page title; optionally displays original page title as subtitle; and provides parser function to query displaytitle
Author(s)
Latest version 4.0.3 (2023-07-26)
Compatibility policy Snapshots releases along with MediaWiki. Master is not backward compatible.
MediaWiki 1.39+
PHP 7.4+
Composer mediawiki/display-title
License MIT License
Download
  • $wgDisplayTitleFollowRedirects
  • $wgDisplayTitleExcludes
  • $wgDisplayTitleHideSubtitle
Quarterly downloads 50 (Ranked 84th)
Translate the Display Title extension
Issues Open tasks · Report a bug

The Display Title extension allows a page's display title to be used as the default link text in links to the page - both links from other pages as well as self-links on the page. Display Title also uses the display title of a page as part of the title of its talk page. It optionally displays the original page title as a subtitle on the page. And, it provides a parser function to query a page's display title.

This extension builds on functionality in MediaWiki core that supports setting a page's display title using the DISPLAYTITLE magic word. Placing {{DISPLAYTITLE:My Display Title}} on a page stores the value of the display title (My Display Title in this case) in the displaytitle page property of the MediaWiki page_props table and, if configured appropriately, displays that value on the page as the title in the title bar. The extension queries the displaytitle value in the page_props table to provide its features.

Installation

  • Download and move the extracted DisplayTitle 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/DisplayTitle
  • Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php file:
    wfLoadExtension( 'DisplayTitle' );
    
  • Configure as required.
  •   Done – Navigate to Special:Version on your wiki to verify that the extension is successfully installed.

Configuration

Configuration flag Default value Description
$wgDisplayTitleHideSubtitle false If false, display the page's original title as a subtitle below the title bar.
$wgDisplayTitleExcludes [ ] An array of names of pages that should not have their page names replaced with their display title in links to the page.
$wgDisplayTitleFollowRedirects true Defines whether redirects should be followed for displaying of the title.

While not strictly necessary for the functioning of Display Title, in order to allow the {{DISPLAYTITLE:...}} magic word to function as expected, set the following MediaWiki core configuration variables:

$wgAllowDisplayTitle = true; // defaults to {{phpi|true}}
$wgRestrictDisplayTitle = false; // defaults to {{phpi|true}}

In order for the Display Title to be used on edit pages and links to them, edit the following system messages on your wiki (substituting the wiki's local language where appropriate):

System Message Page Name Old Page Content New Page Content
MediaWiki:Editing Editing $1 Editing {{#if: {{NAMESPACE}} | {{NAMESPACE}}: |}}{{#getdisplaytitle:{{SUBJECTPAGENAME}}}}
MediaWiki:Editingcomment Editing $1 (new section) Editing {{#if: {{NAMESPACE}} | {{NAMESPACE}}: |}}{{#getdisplaytitle:{{SUBJECTPAGENAME}}}} (new section)
MediaWiki:Editingsection Editing $1 (section) Editing {{#if: {{NAMESPACE}} | {{NAMESPACE}}: |}}{{#getdisplaytitle:{{SUBJECTPAGENAME}}}} (section)
MediaWiki:Editsectionhint Edit section: $1 Edit section: {{#if: {{NAMESPACE}} | {{NAMESPACE}}: |}}{{#getdisplaytitle:{{SUBJECTPAGENAME}}}}
MediaWiki:Creating Creating $1 Creating {{#if:{{NAMESPACE}}|{{NAMESPACE}}:}} {{#getdisplaytitle: {{SUBJECTPAGENAME}} }}

And if you also use Page Forms .

System Message Page Name Old Page Content New Page Content
MediaWiki:Pf formedit createtitle Create $1: $2 Create $1: {{#if:{{NAMESPACE}}|{{NAMESPACE}}:}} {{#getdisplaytitle: {{SUBJECTPAGENAME}} }}
MediaWiki:Pf formedit edittitle Edit $1: $2 Edit $1: {{#if:{{NAMESPACE}}|{{NAMESPACE}}:}} {{#getdisplaytitle: {{SUBJECTPAGENAME}} }}

Usage

Linking

The behavior of the Display Title extension for different types of links is summarized below. The table shows what the link text will be for different situations. In the table, A represents a page title and a represents the page title with the first character of the page name (i.e. the part after the Namespace: if there is a namespace) in lower case. Note that if a page is a redirect (i.e. Page A in the "Page A Redirects to Page B" columns below) and has a display title set, that display title will be ignored by this extension.

Source page contains link: Page A Does Not Redirect Page A Redirects to Page B
Page A Does Not Have Display Title Page A Has Display Title Z Page B Does Not Have Display Title Page B Has Display Title Y
[[A]] A Z B Y
[[a]] a
[[A | A]] A Z B Y
[[a | A]] A Z B Y
[[A | a]] a
[[a | a]] a
[[A | X]] X
[[a | X]] X

#getdisplaytitle parser function

The #getdisplaytitle parser function gets the display title of the page provided. For example:

{{#getdisplaytitle:Book:42}}

will show the displaytitle of page Book:42. To get the display title of the current page, use:

{{#getdisplaytitle:{{FULLPAGENAME}}}}

Lua/Scribunto support

Two Lua (see Extension:Scribunto ) functions exist for getting and setting a page's display title: mw.ext.displaytitle.get() and mw.ext.displaytitle.set(). To use them, you could create a page Module:DisplayTitle containing the following:

local p = {}

function p.set(frame)
	return mw.ext.displaytitle.set(frame.args[1])
end

function p.get(frame)
	return mw.ext.displaytitle.get(frame.args[1])
end

return p

You could then use {{#invoke:DisplayTitle|set|My Display Title}} on a page to set the page's display title to My Display Title, and you could use {{#invoke:DisplayTitle|get|My Page}} to get the display title of page My Page.

Redirects

For redirect pages, if the target page has a display title, it will be used as the display title of the redirect page.

Note that this has two implications that may be unexpected the first time a user sees them. When a page with a display title is moved leaving a redirect, on the page indicating that the move was a success the link text will be the same for both the source and target pages. And, on the Special:WhatLinksHere page for a page with a display title that is the target of a redirect, the link text of the redirect page will be the display title of the target page.

A single level of redirect will be followed.

History

The functionality in this extension evolved as part of the Semantic Title extension. Special thanks go to Van de Bugger, the author of version 1.0 of Semantic Title.

Display Title relies only on functionality in MediaWiki core; it does not depend on any other extension. The functionality in Display Title has been removed from Semantic Title, which now retains solely the functionality to set a page's display title from a Semantic MediaWiki property or Cargo field. However, it is recommended that a page's display title be set using {{DISPLAYTITLE:...}} rather than the functionality in Semantic Title. Semantic Title is being maintained for backward compatibility.

Release notes

Version 4.0.2
Version 4.0.1
  • Fix title handling in hooks (T342672)
  • Revert user preference to disable the extension due to a bug (T342727) and since the current approach introduces latency and risk
Version 4.0.0
  • Drop support for MediaWiki 1.38 and earlier
  • Add mw-displaytitle-subtitle class to subtitle (T205250)
  • Fix subpage subtitles for subpages more than two levels deep (T188872)
  • Fix redirect subtitle so it does not use the displaytitle (T306459)
  • Add name and description properties to composer.json (T311321)
  • Add a user preference to disable the extension (T217179)
  • Coding style and test improvements
Version 3.3
  • Do not remove fragments if not proper part of text
  • Change PersonalUrls hook to SkinTemplateNavigation::Universal hook
  • Replace deprecated WikiPage::factory/Use WikiPageFactory
Version 3.2
  • Add config option for changing redirect display ($wgDisplayTitleFollowRedirects)
  • Replace deprecated PageProps::getInstance
Version 3.1
  • Fix incompatibility with the Cite extension
Version 3.0
  • Several fixes to anchor/fragment behavior
  • Updates due to code deprecations in MediaWiki
  • Compatibility dropped with MW 1.34 and lower
Version 2.2.0
  • Add $wgDisplayTitleExcludes array to define a list of pages on which links should not use DisplayTitle
  • Fix behavior when there are underscores in the link text
  • Don't use deprecated ParserBeforeStrip hook
Version 2.1.0
  • Added tests
  • Added null title check
Version 2.0.0
  • Compatibility dropped with MW 1.28 and lower
  • Bug fixes:
    • T181669: Handle integers passed as link text
    • Fixed bug introduced in version 1.5.2 that caused self links to be wrapped in HtmlArmor
Version 1.5.3
  • On redirect pages, show display title of target page
    • Follows a single level of redirect
Version 1.5.2
  • Bug fixes:
    • T180413: Use supplied link text rather than display title when link text matches page title except for case of first character
    • T180409: Undefined variable: found in "DisplayTitleHooks.php" on line 152
    • T181228: Display titles with italics show as HTML
Version 1.5.1
  • Fixed issue for logged-in users on using action "info"
Version 1.5
  • Text that should have overridden link text was being ignored
  • Fix link to user page in header (personal URLs)
Version 1.4
  • Updated to work with MediaWiki 1.28+
Version 1.3
  • Modified self-links to determine display text identically to non-self-links
Version 1.2
  • Added mw.ext.displaytitle.get() and mw.ext.displaytitle.get() Lua functions written by User:Oetterer
Version 1.1
  • Added check for title with only fragment when creating link
Version 1.0
  • Initial release

Known incompatibilities

  • Configuration parameter $wgDisplayTitleHideSubtitle will not work if you also have the Semantic Breadcrumb Links extension lower than version 1.5.0 installed. Thus the original page title will not display below the title bar.

See also