Extension:TextExtracts
| This extension is maintained by the Reading Web team. |
| For obtaining summaries in production environments, the Page Content Service is recommended and used by Wikimedia products. |
 Release status: stable |
|
|---|---|
| Implementation | API |
| Description | Provides API with plain-text or limited HTML extracts of page content |
| Author(s) | Max Semenik (MaxSemtalk) |
| MediaWiki | 1.23+ |
| PHP | 5.4+ |
| Database changes | No |
| License | GNU General Public License 2.0 or later |
| Download | |
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| Translate the TextExtracts extension if it is available at translatewiki.net | |
| Check usage and version matrix. | |
| Issues | Open tasks · Report a bug |
The TextExtracts extension provides an API which allows to retrieve plain-text or limited HTML (HTML with content for some CSS classes removed) extracts of page content.
DownloadEdit
The extension can be retrieved directly from Git [?]:
- Browse code
- Some extensions have tags for stable releases.
- Browse tags
- Select the tag
- Click "snapshot"
- Each branch is associated with a past MediaWiki release. There is also a "master" branch containing the latest alpha version (might require an alpha version of MediaWiki).
- Browse branches
- Select a branch name
- Click "Continue"
Extract the snapshot and place it in the extensions/TextExtracts/ directory of your MediaWiki installation.
If you are familiar with git and have shell access to your server, you can also obtain the extension as follows:
cd extensions/
git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/mediawiki/extensions/TextExtracts.git
InstallationEdit
- Download and place the file(s) in a directory called
TextExtractsin yourextensions/folder.
- Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php:
wfLoadExtension( 'TextExtracts' );
Done – Navigate to Special:Version on your wiki to verify that the extension is successfully installed.
To users running MediaWiki 1.26 or earlier:
The instructions above describe the new way of installing this extension using wfLoadExtension(). If you need to install this extension on these earlier versions (MediaWiki 1.26 and earlier), instead of wfLoadExtension( 'TextExtracts' );, you need to use:
require_once "$IP/extensions/TextExtracts/TextExtracts.php";
Configuration settingsEdit
$wgExtractsRemoveClassesis an array of <tag>, <tag>.class, .<class>, and #<id> which will be excluded from extraction.- For example,
$wgExtractsRemoveClasses[] = 'dl';removes indented text, often used for non-templated hatnotes that are not desired in summaries. - TextExtracts.php defines the defaults, of which the class "noexcerpt" is one - this may be added to any template to exclude it.
- For example,
$wgExtractsExtendOpenSearchXmldefines whether TextExtracts should provide its extracts to theopensearchAPI module. The default is "false".
APIEdit
| extracts | |
|---|---|
| Returns plain-text or limited HTML extracts of the given pages This module cannot be used as a Generator. |
|
| Prefix | ex |
| Required rights | none |
| Post only? | No |
| Generated help | Current |
| The following documentation is the output of Special:ApiHelp/query+extracts, automatically generated by the pre-release version of MediaWiki that is running on this site (MediaWiki.org). |
prop=extracts (ex)
- This module requires read rights.
- Source: TextExtracts
- License: GPL-2.0-or-later
Returns plain-text or limited HTML extracts of the given pages.
- exchars
How many characters to return. Actual text returned might be slightly longer.
- The value must be between 1 and 1,200.
- Type: integer
- exsentences
How many sentences to return.
- The value must be between 1 and 10.
- Type: integer
- exlimit
How many extracts to return. (Multiple extracts can only be returned if exintro is set to true.)
- No more than 20 (20 for bots) allowed.
- Type: integer or max
- Default: 20
- exintro
Return only content before the first section.
- Type: boolean (details)
- explaintext
Return extracts as plain text instead of limited HTML.
- Type: boolean (details)
- exsectionformat
How to format sections in plaintext mode:
- plain
- No formatting.
- wiki
- Wikitext-style formatting (== like this ==).
- raw
- This module's internal representation (section titles prefixed with <ASCII 1><ASCII 2><section level><ASCII 2><ASCII 1>).
- One of the following values: plain, wiki, raw
- Default: wiki
- excontinue
When more results are available, use this to continue.
- Type: integer
- Get a 175-character extract
- api.php?action=query&prop=extracts&exchars=175&titles=Therion [open in sandbox]
Another example
| This extension is being used on one or more Wikimedia projects. This probably means that the extension is stable and works well enough to be used by such high-traffic websites. Look for this extension's name in Wikimedia's CommonSettings.php and InitialiseSettings.php configuration files to see where it's installed. A full list of the extensions installed on a particular wiki can be seen on the wiki's Special:Version page. |
CaveatsEdit
There are various things to be aware of when using the API
- We do not recommend the usage of `exsentences`. It does not work for HTML extracts and there are many edge cases for which it doesn't exist. For example "Arm. gen. Ing. John Smith was a soldier." will be treated as 4 sentences. We do not plan to fix this.
- Inline images are stripped from the response (even in HTML mode). This means if you are using the Math extension and using formulae in your lead section they may not appear in the summary output.
- In HTML mode we cannot guarantee well formed HTML. Resulting HTML may be invalid or malformed.
- In plaintext mode:
- citations may not be stripped (see phab:T197266)
- if a paragraph ends with an HTML tag e.g. ref tag, new lines may be dropped (see phab:T201946).
- new lines may be dropped after lists phab:T208132
FAQEdit
How can I remove content from a page preview/extract?Edit
TextExtracts will strip any element that is marked with the class noexcerpt. This is provided by the global wgExtractsRemoveClasses.