MediaWiki 1.28

MediaWiki 1.28 is an obsolete release of MediaWiki.

Consult the  file for the full list of changes.

It was deployed on Wikimedia Foundation wikis through incremental "wmf"-branches starting May 10, 2016. The 1.28.0 stable release was released on November 28, 2016.

Download the [https://releases.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.28/ latest releases] or checkout the   branch download>Special:MyLanguage/Download from Git|in Git to follow this release.

Improved HTML file caching
The HTML file caching feature (controlled by ) now supports caching ?action=history views (310697). In addition, the emergency fallback of showing cached pages if the database is down was fixed and now works properly.

Breaking changes

 * Magic links are now disabled by default. They can be enabled by changing the value of . It has been proposed to remove magic link functionality from MediaWiki in a future release, if you depend upon or use them it is requested that you comment at Requests for comment/Future of magic links.

Configuration changes

 * BREAKING CHANGE: is now *required* for all external requests made by MediaWiki via a proxy. Relying on the http_proxy environment variable is no longer supported.
 * The entry point now enforces the existing policy of not allowing access to session data, which includes the session user and the session user's language. If such access is attempted, an exception will be thrown.
 * now defaults to `[ 'local' ]`, where `'local'` signifies local uploads. A value of `[]` (empty array) now means that no upload targets are allowed, effectively disabling the upload dialog.
 * When is true, MediaWiki will periodically send basic information about the local MediaWiki installation to EventLogging on www.mediawiki.org. This data includes, for example, the type of system, PHP version, and chosen database backend. This behavior is off by default.
 * When is true, MediaWiki will label the button to store-to-database-and-show-to-others as "Publish page"/"Publish changes"; if false, the default, they will be "Save page"/"Save changes".
 * The ' ' permission is now granted to all logged-in users (' '). instead of just administrators (' '). Documentation for this feature is available at Help:ChangeContentModel.
 * is now set to one week by default instead of being disabled.
 * Magic links are now disabled by default, and can be re-enabled by modifying the value of . Their usage is discouraged, but if they are manually enabled, a tracking category will be added to help identify usage and make it easier to migrate away from. The tracking categories can be found at Category:Pages_using_ISBN_magic_links, Category:Pages_using_PMID_magic_links and Category:Pages_using_RFC_magic_links. If you depend upon magic link functionality, it is requested that you comment on Requests for comment/Future of magic links and explain your use case(s).
 * New config variable to control what URLs to ignore in upcoming Content-SECURITY-Policy feature's reporting.

New features

 * User::isBot method for checking if an account is a bot role account.
 * Added a new ' ' mode for galleries.
 * Added a new hook, '', to aid in determining if a user is a bot.
 * Extensions can now provide a better error message when their maintenance scripts are run without the extension being installed.
 * Numeric sorting in categories is now supported by setting to ' ' or ' '. If you can't use UCA collations, a 'numeric' collation is also available. If migrating from another collation, you will need to run the  maintenance script.
 * Two new codes have been added to #time parser function: "xit" for days in current month, and "xiz" for days passed in the year, both in Iranian calendar.
 * has a new option,, to use   (Unit Separator) when appropriate for sending multi-valued parameters. This defaults to true when the   instance seems to be for the local wiki.
 * After a client performs an action which alters a database that has replica databases, MediaWiki will wait for the replica databases to synchronize with the master database while it renders the HTML output. However, if the output is a redirect to another wiki on the wiki farm with a different domain, MediaWiki will instead alter the redirect URL to include a ?cpPosTime parameter that triggers the database synchronization when the URL is followed by the client. The same-domain case uses a new cpPosTime cookie.
 * Added new hooks, , , and '', to make it easier for extensions to add 'prop' and 'show' parameters to existing API query modules.

API changes

 * Added 'maxarticlesize' property to action=query&meta=siteinfo which contains the value of.
 * Property 'modulemessages' from action=parse&prop=modules was removed (deprecated since 1.26).
 * The following response properties from action=login, deprecated in 1.27, are now removed: lgtoken, cookieprefix, sessionid. Clients should handle cookies to properly manage session state.
 * Submitting the lgtoken and lgpassword parameters in the query string to action=login is now deprecated and outputs a warning. They should be submitted in the POST body instead.
 * Submitting sensitive authentication request parameters to action=clientlogin, action=createaccount, action=linkaccount, and action=changeauthenticationdata in the query string is now deprecated and outputs a warning. They should be submitted in the POST body instead.
 * Multi-valued parameters may now be separated using U+001F (Unit Separator) instead of the pipe character. This will be useful if some of the multiple values need to contain pipes, e.g. for action=options.
 * The API will now warn if input is not NFC-normalized Unicode or if it contains invalid characters.
 * The 'normalized' list output by action=query and other modules that use ApiPageSet may contain entries where the 'from' value is percent-encoded as the raw value cannot be represented in a valid API response. These are indicated by a 'fromencoded' boolean alongside the existing 'from' parameter.
 * action=paraminfo can now return info about all submodules of a module without listing them all explicitly.
 * It is now possible to assert that the current user is a specific named user, using the 'assertuser' parameter.
 * Added a 'known' property when missing-but-known titles (e.g. from the '' hook) are output in various modules.

Languages updated
MediaWiki supports over 375 languages. Many localisations are updated regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as changes to languages because of Phabricator reports.


 * ban (Balinese), thanks to translators Adi Mayndra, Andru, BASAbali, M. Adiputra, Naval Scene, Nemo bis, NoiX180, and 아라.
 * shn (Shan), thanks to translators Khun Sar, Piangpha, Saiddzone Saimawnkham, Saosukham, and Sengwan.
 * Czech (cs) and Slovak (sk) set as reciprocal fallbacks.
 * Livvi-Karelian (olo) namespace messages created thanks to translator Ilja.mos.

Other changes

 * Improved handling of large diffs.
 * [BREAKING CHANGE] has been removed. You can use or update a custom session provider if needed.
 * "Public domain" was removed as a wiki license option from the installer, in favour of CC-0.
 * parserTests.php has moved to tests/parser/parserTests.php

Release schedule
The dates for point releases for 1.28 were as follows: