Extension:TextExtracts

This extension comes with MediaWiki 1.34 and above. Thus you do not have to download it again. However, you still need to follow the other instructions provided.

MediaWiki extensions manual

TextExtracts 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	Download extension Git [?]: Download Git master browse repository (GitHub) commit history repository contributors (GitHub) code review
Parameters $wgExtractsExtendOpenSearchXml $wgExtractsRemoveClasses
Hooks used ApiOpenSearchSuggest
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 retrieval of plain-text or limited HTML (HTML with content for some CSS classes removed) extracts of page content.

Download

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

Installation

• Download and place the file(s) in a directory called TextExtracts in your extensions/ 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 settings

• $wgExtractsRemoveClasses is 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.

  extension.json defines the defaults, of which the class "noexcerpt" is one - this may be added to any template to exclude it.

• $wgExtractsExtendOpenSearchXml defines whether TextExtracts should provide its extracts to the Opensearch API module. The default is false.

API

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

---

prop=extracts (ex)

(main | query | extracts)

• This module requires read rights.
• Source: TextExtracts
• License: GPL-2.0-or-later

Returns plain-text or limited HTML extracts of the given pages.

• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Extension:TextExtracts#API

Parameters:

exchars

How many characters to return. Actual text returned might be slightly longer.

Type: integer

The value must be between 1 and 1,200.

exsentences

How many sentences to return.

Type: integer

The value must be between 1 and 10.

exlimit

How many extracts to return. (Multiple extracts can only be returned if exintro is set to true.)

Type: integer or max

The value must be between 1 and 20.

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, raw, wiki

Default: wiki

excontinue

When more results are available, use this to continue.

Type: integer

Example:

Get a 175-character extract

api.php?action=query&prop=extracts&exchars=175&titles=Therion [open in sandbox]

Another example

api.php?action=query&prop=extracts&exchars=100&explaintext&titles=Earth [try in ApiSandbox]

Result
{ "query": { "pages": { "9228": { "pageid": 9228, "ns": 0, "title": "Earth", "extract": "Earth, also called the world and, less frequently, Gaia, (or Terra in some works of science fiction)..." } } } }

Caveats

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

FAQ

How can I remove content from a page preview/extract?

TextExtracts will strip any element that is marked with the class noexcerpt. This is provided by the global wgExtractsRemoveClasses.

See also

• Extension:InterwikiExtracts
• Page Content Service