Manual:Links table

MediaWiki database layout

links table

MediaWiki versions:

1.1 – 1.3

The links and brokenlinks tables have been merged to a single pagelinks table, which records the namespace+title key pair of target links rather than the page ID or the prefixed title. See [1]

The links table stored all the links to existing articles. This was good for a variety of functions, from link caching in the output functions to the "what links here" page. It was the "good twin" of the brokenlinks table.

Beginning with the MediaWiki 1.5 release this table is not used, and can be safely deleted. The contents have been migrated to the table pagelinks on update. Regenerating the pagelinks table always is possible using the rebuildall maintenance script.

Fields

l_from

l_from is the cur_id of the article that contains the link. (This is a change from 1.2, wherein the title of the article was stored. This was not very wise, and has now been fixed.)

l_to

l_to is the cur_id of the "target" article.

Schema summary

MediaWiki version:

1.3

+--------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field  | Type            | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+--------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| l_from | int(8) unsigned | NO   | PRI | 0       |       |
| l_to   | int(8) unsigned | NO   | PRI | 0       |       |
+--------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+

MediaWiki version:

1.2

+--------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field  | Type            | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+--------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| l_from | varchar(255)    | NO   | PRI |         |       |
| l_to   | int(8) unsigned | NO   | PRI | 0       |       |
+--------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+

MediaWiki version:

1.1

+--------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field  | Type            | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+--------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| l_from | varchar(255)    | NO   |     |         |       |
| l_to   | int(8) unsigned | NO   |     | 0       |       |
+--------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+

Indexes

MediaWiki version:

1.3

SHOW INDEX IN links;

+--------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field  | Type            | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+--------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| l_from | int(8) unsigned | NO   | PRI | 0       |       |
| l_to   | int(8) unsigned | NO   | PRI | 0       |       |
+--------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+