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Help:Extension:FileImporter

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The FileImporter and FileExporter extensions aim to make moving files from a local wiki to Wikimedia Commons easier. The new functionality allows to move files with all their original data intact, while documenting the move in the version history.

The FileExporter provides a link to Wikimedia Commons on the local wiki and hands over a URL to the extension FileImporter. The FileImporter is a Wikimedia Commons extension which imports the file including all data when all prerequisites are met. Technically, the files won't be "moved", but "copied".

FileImporter has been deployed to Wikimedia Commons in June 2018. FileExporter is deployed and enabled as default feature on all Wikimedia wikis since August 2020.

Background

FileImporter and FileExporter aim to fulfill a request from the German-speaking community's Technical Wishlist and are developed by WMDE's tech team (WikiMedia Deutschland). More information can be found on the main project page on Meta.

Usage

Getting started

1) To use the FileExporter on a local wiki (for example, on English Wikipedia), you have to be logged in and be allowed to upload files.

2) There needs to be a configuration file for your wiki (for example, English Wikipedia has it). Many files already exist, based on the files from the CommonsHelper2 tool. We're asking users to have a look at them and update or create them if needed to make sure the imports are done right.

For more info, read the documentation how the configuration files work and what they are needed for.


Step by step

You need to be logged in in order to use the feature.

  •  
    1: On a local file page, click on the "Export to Wikimedia Commons" tab (above the image).
  •  
    2: The FileImporter checks if the file can be imported and if replacements need to be made during the import. This step is based on the wiki's configuration file. Read more.
  •  
    3: A preview page on Commons shows you what will be imported. You can edit the file title and page information, and ask the FileImporter to clean up the source wiki in your name, by adding a template like NowCommons to the source file, or deleting the source file if you have admin rights. Clicking on “Import File” copies the file to Commons.
  •  
    4: The file is imported, including the name of the original uploader and name of the importer, the previous history of the file and the file page, and any changes that were made during import.

How imported files can be found

  • In the revision history of a file, the import is shown as a null revision (i.e. an entry in the revision list that doesn’t actually change the page). If changes were made during import, an additional text revision is created.
  • New revisions that are created during import are tagged with Modified with FileImporter. This way it can be filtered on the recent changes page.
  • Both an upload log entry and an import log entry are created and associated with the null revision and with the importing user, and timestamped with the import date. Having both log entries is the default for uploads, although it might lead to "doubled" entries in recent changes and watchlists, see this example file and its log entries.
  • For (old) imported file revisions, upload log entries are created with the date and user of the original upload to make all file revisions appear in Commons' upload log. These revisions are also tagged with Imported with FileImporter.
  • Imported files are marked with an invisible comment that says "This file was moved here using FileImporter from" and mentions the full URL of the source file. CirrusSearch's insource: feature can be used to find files with this comment, e.g.: insource:"This file was moved here using FileImporter from //en.wikipedia". Note this also finds later derivatives of imported files, but not files where the comment was removed.

How to add categories

The message fileimporter-post-import-revision-annotation (empty by default) can be used to add any additional wikitext to every imported file. The message accepts two parameters:

  • $1 - Full URL of the source file.
  • $2 - Time of the import in ISO 8601, e.g. 2004-02-12T15:19:21+00:00.

For example, to categorize by source wiki, an interface administrator can set the message to {{#invoke:Imported with FileImporter|main|url=$1|time=$2}}, where the invoked Lua module ("Module:Imported with FileImporter" in this example) looks like this: 

local exports = {}
function exports.main( frame )
    return "[[Category:Files moved to Commons from " .. mw.uri.new( frame.args.url ).host:gsub( ".org", "" ) .. "]]"
end
return exports

Deployment roadmap

  • 2018-06-12: Export to test.wikipedia.org
  • 2018-06-25: Export to Wikimedia Commons
    • FileExporter as a beta feature on de.WP, fa.WP, ar.WP   OK
    • exporting from mediawiki.org now to Wikimedia Commons   OK
    • FileImporter on Wikimedia Commons   OK
  • 2018-07-11:
  • 2019-01-16:
    • Deployment of the FileExporter beta feature to all other wikis   OK
  • 2019-09-24:
    • Deployment as a default feature on de.WP, fa.WP, ko.WP, mr.WP and sourceswiki (wikisource.org)   OK
  • 2020-08-05:
    • Deployment as a default feature on all remaining Wikis   OK
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