MobileFrontend

WMF engineering activity

Mobile Frontend

A PHP extension providing a mobile view for any MediaWiki site

Group:	Mobile
Start:	2011
End:	2012
Management:	Tomasz Finc
Team:	Patrick Reilly, Phil Chang

MobileFrontend is a MediaWiki extension providing a mobile front-end to MediaWiki sites.

It was developed to replace Wikimedia's Ruby-based mobile gateway

Status

[edit status] • [add new]

2012-05-03: We'll no longer be updating this project as all general work on MobileFrontend is complete. All further activity will be in sub project pages like our core migration

Rewrite rationale

• Puts the code in our code repo rather than on github
• Easier to review code in a language that most Wikimedia/MediaWiki developers are already using (PHP, instead of Ruby)
• Easier on the ops team to maintain servers (most infrastructure is already built for PHP web apps, not Ruby web apps)
• Allows for third parties to easily create mobile sites

Specifications

• Written in PHP
• Extensible for any MediaWiki installation
• Support current Ruby-implemented API (mentioned on bug; where is this?)
• Requirements

Testing

• English: prototype, User feedback
• Japanese (Non-roman character set): Prototype, User feedback
• Hebrew (RTL language): Prototype, User feedback

Deployment to Wikimedia cluster

• Deployment instructions
• Deployment checklist
• Deployment plan

Additional documents

• User requirements:
  • In order for searching in the mobile view to work properly, you need to install Extension:OpenSearchXml
• Software design document:
• Test plan:
• Documentation plan:
• User interface design docs:
• Schedule:
• Task management:
• Release management plan:
• Communications plan:

Communications

• Call for testers on our new Mobile gateway prototype, Wikimedia blog, June 10th, 2011.

See also

• bugzilla:25558: "Mobile site should be rewritten in PHP"
• m:Mobile Projects

Related projects

• Photo Upload
• Mobile Design