Extension:WebStore

This extension is obsolete!

Use thumb.php as a 404 handler instead. Starting with MediaWiki 1.19, you should use thumb_handler.php instead of thumb.php.

MediaWiki extensions manual - list

WebStore Release status: unstable
Implementation	User interface
Description	Web-only (non-NFS) file storage middleware. It is needed by the ProofreadPage extension.
Author(s)	Tim Starling
License	Any OSI approved license
Download	SVN [?]: checkout-url tree code changes
Check usage and version matrix

WebStore is intended to handle images and the generation of thumbnails in a multiple-server environment. It includes a web-server error 404 handler; if a thumbnail is requested that does not already exist on the local server, the request is forwarded to another server so that the thumbnail image may be automatically generated.

Communication between the multiple servers is based on WWW protocols (http) only.

The WebStore extension is needed by the ProofreadPage extension. Unfortunately, documentation seems to be missing completely. Please add anything you know about this extension here.

WebStore extends the FileStore.

Installation

1. Copy all the files to extensions/WebStore
2. Add require( "$IP/extensions/WebStore/WebStore.php" ); to your LocalSettings.php
3. WebStore comes with a file called 404-handler.php. To be able to catch 404 events, it needs to be registered as a 404 handler.
   Using Apache, adding something like

   ErrorDocument 404 /extensions/WebStore/404-handler.php
   

   to httpd.conf or to apache2.conf should work.

by example 

The root of your server is configured as following :

DocumentRoot /var/www/

the path of 404-handler.php

/var/www/wiki/extensions/WebStore/404-handler.php

the code will be

ErrorDocument 404 /wiki/extensions/WebStore/404-handler.php

With Apache, an other possibility is to use a rewrite rule. By example, you can add following lines in an Apache configuration file :

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/images/thumb(.*)\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ /extensions/WebStore/404-handler.php

You should also create a file called simple404.php like this:

<?php 
 
class Simple404 extends WebStoreCommon {
  function execute(){
    $this->htmlError( 404, 'webstore_404' ); 
  } 
} 
$h = new Simple404;
$h->execute();

and add the following line to LocalSettings.php, somewhere below require( "$IP/extensions/WebStore/WebStore.php" );:

$wgWebStoreSettings['fallback404'] = 'simple404.php';

This way, when an image is requested for the first time, it is directly sent to the browser (without sending a 404 status error code before the image file).

Problems and Solutions

WebStore doesn't work

A WebStore needs a CURL-module for php. A default configuration in a some systems doesn't containt this module. In this situation you see, for example, a black frame in proofread or nothing instead a thumbnail and a 404-error in an apache logfile for this thumbnail.

If you try to specify the URL of this thumbnail in you browser, you will get, for example,
  Fatal error: Call to undefined function curl_init() in /var/www/wiki/extensions/WebStore/WebStorePostFile.php on line 38  

Solution:

Install CURL module for php. For example, in Ubuntu

apt-get install php5-curl

and don't forget to restart apache.

A non-Latin characters in a file name

A WebStore trying to creates temporary file in a directory with encoded name. So, if a file name contains a non-Latin characters that encoded to %xx, that this attempt finish with error webstore_temp_open.

Solution: In file $IP/extensions/WebStore/404-handler.php search string:

$rel = substr( $url, strlen( $thumbBase ) + 1 ); // plus one for slash

and replace it by

$rel = urldecode(substr( $url, strlen( $thumbBase ) + 1 )); // plus one for slash