Extension:Wildcard search

MediaWiki extensions manual - list

Wildcard search Release status: unknown
Implementation	Search
Description	Adds wildcard search capability
Author(s)	Assela Pathirana
Last version	Fork of this - copied 22/7/07
MediaWiki	1.6.7 and higher
License	No license specified
Download	No link
Added rights Version 2 of the GNU General Public License
Check usage (experimental)

Early Mediawiki releases did not allow wildcard searches by default (e.g. a wildcard search for rabbi* will return pages with rabbit, rabbits or rabbi), but this can easily be turned on, see below.

This wildcard search is standard now, at least since release 1.12, if not earlier.

How to turn on the wildcard search in early MW releases?

It would be possible to do this by changing several lines in the Mediawiki code. However, this is not a recommended way, as it will create problems at future updates, etc. This 'extension' allows doing the same without changing the core mediawiki code.

• First save this file as SearchMySQLwildcards.php in a sub-folder (let's say 'wildcardsearch' ) of the extensions directory.

<?PHP
#Copyright (C) 2006 Assela Pathirana under the version 2 of the GNU General Public License
#Adds wildcard search functionality to mediawiki
# file : SearchMySQLwildcards.php

require_once( 'SearchEngine.php' );
require_once( 'SearchMySQL.php' );
 
//Register this search type and override the default search set in DefaultSettins.php
$wgSearchType   = 'SearchMySQLwildcards';
 
//Create a new search class based on the parent
class SearchMySQLwildcards extends SearchMySQL {
        public static function legalSearchChars() {
                //include + and * as valid characters
                return "A-Za-z_'0-9\\x80-\\xFF\\-+*";
        }
}
$strictMatching=false;
 
$wgExtensionCredits['other'][] = array(
       'name' => 'Wildcard search',
       'version' => '071002',
       'author' => 'Assela Pathirana',
       'description' => 'adds wildcard search capability',
       'url' => 'http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Wildcard_search'
       );
 
?>

• Then add the following to the end of your LocalSettings.php file

require_once("$IP/extensions/wildcardsearch/SearchMySQLwildcards.php");

Note

The present code is for MySQL database type. For others changes are necessary.

Compatibility

For MW 1.8.3 remove public static before legalSearchChars() function declaration.
For MW 1.7.1 remove public static before legalSearchChars() function declaration.

Change log

• 11:29, 2 October 2007 (UTC) Fixed and removed code errors mentioned here
• 08:56, 8 August 2007 (UTC) Fixed the code error mentioned here
• 08:32, 10 October 2006 (JST) Made a minor change to make the code compatible with 1.7.1 version of mediawiki. Thanks to Lars Pontoppidan for the suggestion.