Extension:OnlineStatusBar

MediaWiki extensions manual

OnlineStatusBar Release status: stable
Implementation	User activity
Description	Adds little bar with icon indicating whether user is online or not on user page.
Author(s)	Petr Bena
Latest version	1.2.0 (2019-12-08)
Compatibility policy	Snapshots releases along with MediaWiki. Master is not backward compatible.
MediaWiki	>= 1.35.3
Database changes	Yes
License	GNU General Public License 2.0 or later
Download	Download extension Git [?]: Download Git master browse repository (GitHub) commit history repository contributors (GitHub) code review
Parameters $wgOnlineStatusBarDefaultOnline $wgOnlineStatusBar_WriteTime $wgOnlineStatusBarDefaultOffline $wgOnlineStatusBar_LogoutTime $wgOnlineStatusBarCacheTime $wgOnlineStatusBarTrackIpUsers $wgOnlineStatusBar_AwayTime $wgOnlineStatusBarAutoDelete $wgOnlineStatusBarDefaultEnabled
Hooks used ArticleViewHeader GetPreferences LoadExtensionSchemaUpdates MagicWordwgVariableIDs ParserGetVariableValueSwitch UserGetDefaultOptions UserLoginComplete UserLogout
Quarterly downloads	0
Translate the OnlineStatusBar extension if it is available at translatewiki.net
Issues	Open tasks · Report a bug

The OnlineStatusBar extension adds a little bar to user and talk pages of each user who enabled it, which signalizes whether they are available or not. It also creates the magic word {{ISONLINE}} which may be used on user pages to check the status of a user. It is available in the user preferences.

Installation

If your wiki is on a remote server, extract the files to a temporary directory on your local computer, and then upload all of the extracted files to the extensions directory on the server.

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

  wfLoadExtension( 'OnlineStatusBar' );
  

• Run the update script which will automatically create the necessary database tables that this extension needs.
• Run the following SQL query to create additional tables in your MediaWiki's database:

CREATE TABLE online_status (
`username` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
`timestamp` char(14) NOT NULL default '',
PRIMARY KEY USING HASH (`username`)
) ENGINE=MEMORY;

If you are using SQLite, use this SQL query instead:

CREATE TABLE online_status (
username varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
timestamp char(14) NOT NULL default ''
);
CREATE INDEX username ON online_status (username);

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

Configuration

You may insert those parameters into LocalSettings.php:

• $wgOnlineStatusBarDefaultIpUsers - if you want to track also ip users
• $wgOnlineStatusBarDefaultOnline - default online status
• $wgOnlineStatusBarDefaultOffline - default offline status
• $wgOnlineStatusBarDefaultEnabled - if it's enabled for all users as default
• $wgOnlineStatusBarWriteTime - delay between database write access for update
• $wgOnlineStatusBar_LogoutTime

Documentation

How does it work

This extension creates a new table which contains username and last time when user opened some page. Each user has option to enable it in preferences (under Misc heading), all users who do not have it enabled are not affected and do not update this table. When user login or logout it insert / delete the record from table, expired records are frequently removed so that table is very small, users update the table everytime when they read any page so that information whether they are available is updated.

When viewing a user page where enabled it will show the current users availability like so:

Caching

Extension is using caching in order to access db only when it's necessary, memcached is required for that.

Api

New module for api called "onlinestatus" is available, you can display user online status by opening:

api.php?action=query&prop=onlinestatus&onlinestatususer=User

where User is username of user

Performance

It reads db everytime when user who has this enabled open any page (cached) in order to find if it's necessary to update timestamp, if timestamp is older than value specified in config, it's updated, thanks to that extension shouldn't write more frequently than once a 5 minutes or so.

Classes

It contains 4 classes each in separate file

OnlineStatusBarHooks

This class contains the hooks which are used.

ISONLINE

Extension also add a magic word {{isonline}} which turns to current status of user, possible states are:

• online - User is online
• away / busy - User is away or busy
• unknown - User doesn't want to be tracked or it's not a user
• offline - User is offline

Working inside the Foreground Skin

To make this extension show up at the right place inside the Foreground skin, the same skin as Wikiapiary, you need to change the following line:

On line 36 of resources/ext.onlinestatusbar.js change:

// Add status bar wrapper
		$( 'h1' ).first().prepend( $statusbarFields );

to

// Add status bar wrapper
		$( 'h2.title' ).first().prepend( $statusbarFields );

Cindy.cicalese, the writer of the Extension:Title Icon, found this fix.