--------------------------------------------------------------------------
README for the News extension
Copyright © 2007 Daniel Kinzler
Licenses: GNU General Public Licence (GPL)
          GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The News extension allows a custom excerpt from Special:Recentchanges to be 
included on a wiki page, or to be published as an RSS or Atom feed. 
It supports several types of filtering as well as full custom formating of
entries, using template syntax.

<http://mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:News>

The News extension was originally written by Daniel Kinzler in 2007
and is released under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL).

Note that the functionality of this extension overlaps with the DynamicPageList
and DynamicPageList2 extensions - however, this extension has a different focus.

== Installing ==

Copy the News directory into the extensions folder of your 
MediaWiki installation. Then add the following line to your
LocalSettings.php file (near the end):

  require_once( "$IP/extensions/News/News.php" );

== Usage ==

The News extension prvodes provides three custom tags:
* <news>: this includes a list of recent changes on the wiki page
* <newsfeed>: this defines a news feed of recent changes; on the wiki page,
  a preview is rendered, similar to the output of the <news> tag; the wiki
  page then also supports the newsfeed action, which returns the feed in
  RSS or Atom format.
* <newsfeedlink>: this creates a link to a news feed defined using a
  <newsfeed> tag. This is convenient for creating prominent links to the 
  news feeds.

=== Filtering and formatting ===

To get the last 10 changes to your wiki on any wiki page, use the
following:

	<news/>

You can provide options to controll the listing (for example, 20
entries and no minor edits):

	<news limit="20" nominor/>

To define your own format for the generated list, you can provide a
pattern that will be used for each entry:

	<news limit="20" nominor>
	* [[{{{pagename}}}]] ([[User:{{{user}}}]], {{{timeanddate}}})
	</news>

For a full list of options and template parameters, see below.

The <newsfeed> tag supports the same optiosn for filtering and
formatting as the <news> tag. For information on how to access a feed defined
using <newsfeed>, see the section "Accessing Feeds" below.

=== Options ===
The following options (tag attributes) can be used to controll the output of the
<news> and <newsfeed> tags:

* unique        show only the most recent change to each page

* limit         the maximum number of entries to show

* categories    limit results to the given categories. Multiple categories can
                be given separated by "|"; Intersections of categories are not
                supported. Recursion into subcategories is not supported.

* namespaces    limit results to the given namespaces. Multiple namespaces can
                be given separated by "|"; you can use "0", "-" or "main" to
                refer to the default namespace.

* notalk        ignore all "talk" namespaces. Not used if the namespaces option
                is given.

* nominor       hide minor edits ("true" or "false", default is "false"). If
                given, the edit shown may not refer to the current revision. 

* nobot         hide bot edits ("true" or "false", default is "false"). If
                given, the edit shown may not refer to the current revision. 

* noanon        hide anonymous edits ("true" or "false", default is "false"). If
                given, the edit shown may not refer to the current revision. 

* onlypatrolled show only patrolled edits ("true" or "false", default is
                "false"). If given, the edit shown may not refer to the current
                revision. 

* onlynew       show only page creations ("true" or "false", default is
                "false"). If given, the edit shown may not refer to the current
                revision. 

* trigger       show only edits with the given trigger in the edit comment.
                Used primarily to explicitely "publish" pages to a news box
                or feed. If used, the resulting feed will also look slightly
                different, focussing less on a single edit and more on the
                page. Most importantly, the edit comment will not be show in
                the feed, and a generic link to the page will be used, instead
                of a permalink to a specific version (unless the permalink
                option is also set).

* permalinks    force the use of permalinks in feeds, even if a trigger is
                used to publish pages. Per default, feeds that use a trigger
                use generic page links instead of permalinks to specific
                versions. Feeds not using a trigger always use permalinks.

* prefix        wikitext to be inserted before the wikitext generated from the
                template text is parsed. Can be used to make tables from news.

* postfix       wikitext to be inserted after the wikitext generated from the
                template text is parsed. Can be used to make tables from news.

=== Parameters ===
When giving a template text between the <news> tags, the following
template-parameters are available (use them as {{{xxx}}}):

* rawtime      raw timestamp - can be formated using the parser function "time",
               e.g. {{#time:j. M.|{{{rawtime}}}}} 

* date         date of the edit, formated per user preference

* time         time of the edit, formated per user preference

* timeanddate  time and date of the edit, formated per user preference

* namespace    numeric namespace id, can be used with {{ns:{{{namespace}}}}}

* title        canonical title (without namespace prefix)

* pagename     full title, with namespace prefix

* type         numerical change type (0 = edit, 1 = new, 2 = move, 3 = log,
               4 = move-over)

* minor        "true" for minor changes, blank otherwise

* user         user name who made the entry

* comment      edit summary (escaped wikitext, safe to use)

* new_rev      revision id associated with this entry (or zero)

* old_rev      revision id associated with the entry before this one (or zero)

* diff         full diff link for the edit (or blank)

* permalink    full url to the revision created by the edit (may not be the
               current revision)

* bot          "true" for bot edits, blank otherwise

* new          "true" for newly created pages, blank otherwise

* patrolled    "true" if the edit was patrolled, blank otherwise

* old_len      page length before the edit

* new_len      page length after the edit

* content      the full content of the page

* head         the page's content up to about 2KB of text, with smart cut-off.

=== Accessing Feeds ===

If the page Foo defines a feed using a <newsfeed> tag, that feed can be
referenced by using feed=rss or feed=atom in the url respectively.

So, if the URL path for page Foo is /wiki/Foo, you can use
  /wiki/Foo?feed=rss 
to get an RSS feed for that page. If the URL is /w/index.php?title=Foo,
you would use 
  /w/index.php?title=Foo&feed=rss

You can conveniently create links to feeds using the <newsfeedlink> tag:
For example, 
  <newsfeedlink feed="Foo" format="rss">My Foo Feed</newsfeedlink>
would generate a link to the news feed defined on page Foo using a
<newsfeed> tag.

You can also specify an icon to use in the link:
  <newsfeedlink feed="Foo" format="rss" icon="rss.png">My Foo Feed</newsfeedlink>
would generate a link that has the image "rss.png" before the link text
(the icon option refers to the name of an image uploaded to the wiki). 
  <newsfeedlink feed="Foo" format="rss" icon="rss.png|right">My Foo Feed</newsfeedlink>
would generate a link that has the image to the right of the link text; and
  <newsfeedlink feed="Foo" format="rss" icon="rss.png" title="RSS feed"/>
generates a link that only shows the given icon. The title attribute specifies
the tooltip to show when the mouse hovers over the link.

Note that the link text may contain full wiki text, and the title-attribute may
contain variables like {{PAGENAME}}.

== Configuration ==
Configuration settings to define in LocalSettings.php

* $wgNewsFeedURLPattern: this defines the pattern used by the <newsfeedlink>
tag to generate feed URLs. In the pattern, $1 will be replaced by the page title,
and $2 will be replaced by the requested feed format.
If you are using pretty URLs with $wgArticlePath set to $wgScript/$1 or /wiki/$1,
etc, you can use the following for nicer feed URLs: 
  $wgNewsFeedURLPattern = $wgArticlePath . '?feed=$2';
(note that $wgArticlePath already contains $1 with the meaning "page title")
If you want to use rewrite rules for canonical feed URLs, like /feed/Foo.rss,
set
  $wgNewsFeedURLPattern = '/feed/$1.$2';

* $wgNewsFeedUserPattern: this defines the pattern used to generate author
names in feed items. In the pattern, $1 is replaced by the user name. To 
e.g. generate email-addresses at your site as author names, use
  $wgNewsFeedUserPattern = '$1@example.com';