Offline content generator/print-on-demand service

Order process

• User's browser gets ?title=Special:Book&bookcmd=order_collection&colltitle=???&partner=pediapress or posts to Special:Book with bookcmd=post_zip to order the current book.
• Extension calls buildJSONCollection() to build some metadata, and posts to mw-serve
  • Example (PHP var_dump style):

array(9) {
  ["metabook"]=>
  string(2611) "{"type":"collection","licenses":[{"type":"license","name":"License","mw_rights_icon":"//creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights20.png","mw_rights_page":null,"mw_rights_url":"//creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/","mw_rights_text":"Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0"}],"title":"1933 Atlantic hurricane season","subtitle":"","items":[{"type":"chapter","title":"Introduction","items":[{"type":"article","content_type":"text/x-wiki","title":"1933 Atlantic hurricane season","latest":579329188,"revision":579329188,"timestamp":"1383073948","url":"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Atlantic_hurricane_season","currentVersion":1}]},{"type":"chapter","title":"Storms","items":[{"type":"article","content_type":"text/x-wiki","title":"1933 Trinidad hurricane","latest":550867472,"revision":550867472,"timestamp":"1366230514","url":"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Trinidad_hurricane","currentVersion":1},{"type":"article","content_type":"text/x-wiki","title":"1933 Texas tropical storm","latest":572402424,"revision":572402424,"timestamp":"1378848251","url":"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Texas_tropical_storm","currentVersion":1},{"type":"article","content_type":"text/x-wiki","title":"1933 Chesapeake\u2013Potomac hurricane","latest":579390421,"revision":579390421,"timestamp":"1383099157","url":"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Chesapeake%E2%80%93Potomac_hurricane","currentVersion":1},{"type":"article","content_type":"text/x-wiki","title":"1933 Cuba\u2013Brownsville hurricane","latest":572402369,"revision":572402369,"timestamp":"1378848216","url":"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Cuba%E2%80%93Brownsville_hurricane","currentVersion":1},{"type":"article","content_type":"text/x-wiki","title":"1933 Treasure Coast hurricane","latest":575674769,"revision":575674769,"timestamp":"1380856363","url":"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Treasure_Coast_hurricane","currentVersion":1},{"type":"article","content_type":"text/x-wiki","title":"1933 Outer Banks hurricane","latest":576090149,"revision":576090149,"timestamp":"1381119599","url":"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Outer_Banks_hurricane","currentVersion":1},{"type":"article","content_type":"text/x-wiki","title":"1933 Tampico hurricane","latest":567480201,"revision":567480201,"timestamp":"1375840931","url":"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Tampico_hurricane","currentVersion":1},{"type":"article","content_type":"text/x-wiki","title":"1933 Cuba\u2013Bahamas hurricane","latest":578977949,"revision":578977949,"timestamp":"1382894555","url":"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Cuba%E2%80%93Bahamas_hurricane","currentVersion":1}]}]}"
  ["base_url"]=>
  string(25) "http://en.wikipedia.org/w"
  ["script_extension"]=>
  string(4) ".php"
  ["template_blacklist"]=>
  string(32) "MediaWiki:PDF Template Blacklist"
  ["template_exclusion_category"]=>
  string(16) "Exclude in print"
  ["print_template_prefix"]=>
  string(5) "Print"
  ["print_template_pattern"]=>
  string(8) "$1/Print"
  ["pod_api_url"]=>
  string(38) "http://pediapress.com/api/collections/"
  ["command"]=>
  string(8) "zip_post"
}

• mw-serve posts to pediapress to get an endpoint URL, then schedules a "post" job in its queue
• The "post" job (grep for "rpc_post") itself queues a "makezip" job and then waits for it to complete
• The "makezip" (grep for "rpc_makezip") writes the "metabook" data to a file and then shells out a mw-zip command to actually make the zip file.
• The mw-zip command (implemented by buildzip.py) appears to create a temporary directory, put some files in it, then zip it up. The fetching of the files goes something like this:
  • If the book contains pages from multiple wikis, it will create a subdir for each wiki. Otherwise, it just uses the base directory.
  • For enwiki, it tries to find a "trusted" revision using wikitrust.
  • If it was a multiple-wiki, it writes another metabook.json with the "overall" data and an nfo with a format of "multi-nuwiki" (no other keys).
• Now the "post" job resumes. It reads the zip file, and posts it to pediapress.

Zip file contents

Moved to Offline content generator/Bundle format.