Multi-Content Revisions/Derived slots

Derived slots are an an addition to MCR that allows information that is derived from the content of a page (or more precisely, from the content of the slots of a revision) to be stored alongside that content (as part of the same revision), even if the derived content is generated asynchronously or updated later on.

Derived slots work much like regular slots, with a few important differences:

• their size is not included in the revision size, and their hash does not contribute to the revision's hash.
• they can be updated at any time, using a new updateRevision() method that lives alongside saveRevision (PageUpdater).
• updating a derived slot is a destructive operation, the previous content of that slot (on the same revision) is lost.
• updating derived slots is invisible to users. No entry is generated in the revision history or in RecentChanges or on the watchlist. The update is a purely technical operation, not an event from the perspective of the user.
• If a derived slot is updated for the current revision of a page, this would however cause the page to be re-rendered (perhaps we want to make this optional), and derived page data (such as entries in the links tables) to be regenerated, similar to the way pages get rerendered when a template changes.
• Derived slots should not show in diff views, at least not per default. The purpose of a diff view is to show what a user changed.

See also

• Manual:PageUpdater.php