Extension:Notificator

MediaWiki extensions manual - list

Notificator Release status: beta
Implementation	Parser function, Notify, Special page, Database
Description	Notifies someone by e-mail about changes to a page when a button on that page gets clicked.
Author(s)	Patrick NagelTalk
Last version	1.1 (2011-08-17)
MediaWiki	1.17 beta 1 or higher
PHP	5.2.x
Database changes	yes
License	GPL
Download	Download snapshot (Git master) Git [?]: repo summary • tree • code changes SVN [?]: checkout-url • tree • code changes
Example	here
Parameters ngFromAddress
Hooks used LoadExtensionSchemaUpdates ParserTestTables ParserFirstCallInit
Check usage (experimental)

Extension:Notificator allows you to place a notification button on a page (or a set of pages, through a template). When the button is pressed, an e-mail containing the changes since the last notification, or just a link to the page if there was no notification before, is sent to an e-mail address. The e-mail address can be pre-defined, or it can be left empty, which causes the extension to show an input field next to the notification button, where any e-mail address can be entered.

The use case for which the extension was written, is the following: A company internal Wiki where task pages are work assignments, and where the project manager needs a way to notify (with the click of a button) the assigned resource about changes to the work assignments. The standard MediaWiki notification system does not work for multiple reasons:

1. the assigned resource may not have all task pages on his/her watchlist
2. the project manager may want to make multiple edits, and would only want to notify after all edits are done, not for each individual edit
3. the project manager would want to notify one person after one edit, and another person after another edit - not everyone on every edit

There are probably other use cases where this functionality could be useful as well.

Usage

The extension can be used in two ways:

1. with a pre-set e-mail address to be notified: {{#notificator: someone@example.com|Optional button label}}
2. without a pre-set e-mail address, in which case any e-mail address can be entered right on the page: {{#notificator:}}

In most cases, one of these parser function invocations will be in a template that gets transcluded into a class of pages.

Details

When the "notify" button gets clicked, the following happens:

• Notificator checks if that e-mail address has already received a notification about the page the button is on
  • If it has, Notificator checks whether the notification was for the current revision
    • If it was for the current revision, it does not send another notification.
    • If it was not for the current revision, it sends a mail containing a link to the page, and the differences between the current and the last notified revision
  • If Notificator has never before sent a notification about this page, yet, it sends a mail containing just a link to the page

The person clicking the button sees the e-mail that gets send, or a message that no notification was sent.

Known issues

• The notification e-mail is being sent in the language of the user that clicks the Notificator button - which might not be a language understood by the person being notified.

Installation

To install this extension, add the following to LocalSettings.php:

$ngFromAddress = "Notificator <notificator@example.com>"; // optional
require_once("$IP/extensions/Notificator/Notificator.php");

Now please run the update.php script, which will create the necessary 'notificator' table in your Wiki's database.

Configuration parameters

$ngFromAddress

The e-mail address the notification e-mails appear to be coming from. If this is not set, $wgPasswordSender will be used instead.

Recent changes

• Version 1.1: It's now possible to notify up to 10 e-mail addresses at the same time. E-mail addresses need to be comma-separated (e.g. {{#notificator: jane@example.com, joe@example.com|Jane and Joe}}). When updating from 1.0.x, you need to run the update.php script again.