MediaWiki 1.29/en

MediaWiki 1.29 is a future release of MediaWiki. Consult the file for the full list of changes. It is currently deployed on Wikimedia Foundation wikis through incremental "wmf"-branches starting November 1, 2016. The 1.29.0 stable release is expected to come out on sometime in June 2017. Download the or checkout the   branch in Git to follow this release.

New features

 * A cookie can now be set when a user is autoblocked, to track that user if they move to a new IP address. This is disabled by default.
 * Added ILocalizedException interface to standardize the use of localized exceptions, largely so the API can handle them more sensibly.
 * Blocks created automatically by MediaWiki, such as for configured proxies or dnsbls, are now indicated as such and use a new i18n message when displayed.

Configuration changes

 * Default cookie expiration time has been reduced to 30 days. Login cookie expiration time is kept at 180 days.
 * A new configuration variable has been added: . This determines whether to set a cookie when a user is autoblocked. Doing so means that a blocked user, even after logging out and moving to a new IP address, will still be blocked.
 * The  right and associated password reset capture feature has been removed.
 * The  parameter to the  hook should be set to a Status object or boolean false. This should be compatible with at least MediaWiki 1.23 if not earlier. Returning a raw HTML string is now deprecated.
 * The  parameter to the  hook should be set to an  . This is compatible with MediaWiki 1.27 and later. Returning a code for ApiBase::parseMsg will no longer work.
 * ApiBase::$messageMap is no longer public. Code attempting to access it will result in a PHP fatal error.
 * is now true by default to work around restrictive DMARC policies.
 * Subpages are now enabled by default in the Template namespace. Set $wgNamespacesWithSubpages[NS_TEMPLATE] to false to keep the old behavior.
 * is now false by default . This change only affects wikis with $wgJobRunRate > 0.

New features

 * A cookie can now be set when a user is autoblocked, to track that user if they move to a new IP address. This is disabled by default.

Upgraded external libraries

 * Updated QUnit from v1.22.0 to v1.23.1.

Bug fixes

 * Core parser functions returning a number now format the number according to the page content language, not wiki content language.

Action API changes

 * Submitting sensitive authentication request parameters to,  ,  , and   in the query string is now an error. They should be submitted in the POST body instead.
 * The capture option for  has been removed
 * now requires a POST.
 * API errors and warnings may be requested in non-English languages using the new,  , and   parameters.
 * API error codes may have changed. Most notably, errors from modules using parameter prefixes (e.g. all query submodules) will no longer be prefixed.
 * may return a "Warnings" status, and now returns 'warnings' and 'errors' subelements (as applicable) instead of 'message'.
 * returns an 'errors' subelement rather than.
 * now reports errors when moving the talk page as an array under key, rather than using   and  . The format for subpage move errors has also changed.
 * no longer includes a "rendered" property on warnings and errors for each item. Use  if you're wanting parsed output.
 * no longer returns a  property. Use   if you're wanting HTML formatting of error messages.
 * now reports optional stash failures as an array under key 'stasherrors' rather than a 'stashfailed' text string.
 * reports 'errors' and 'warnings' instead of a single 'error', and no longer returns a 'message' on success.
 * Added  to validate passwords for the account creation and password change forms.

Action API internal changes

 * New methods were added to ApiBase to handle errors and warnings using i18n keys. Methods for using hard-coded English messages were deprecated:
 * ApiBase::dieUsage was deprecated
 * ApiBase::dieUsageMsg was deprecated
 * ApiBase::dieUsageMsgOrDebug was deprecated
 * ApiBase::getErrorFromStatus was deprecated
 * ApiBase::parseMsg was deprecated
 * ApiBase::setWarning was deprecated
 * ApiBase::$messageMap is no longer public. Code attempting to access it will result in a PHP fatal error.
 * The $message parameter to the hook should be set to an ApiMessage. This is compatible with MediaWiki 1.27 and later. Returning a code for ApiBase::parseMsg will no longer work.
 * is deprecated in favor of . For the time being   is a subclass of   to allow things that catch only   to still function properly.
 * If, for some strange reason, code was using an  instead of , note that the result format has changed and various methods now take a module path rather than a module name.
 * ApiMessageTrait::getApiCode now strips 'apierror-' and 'apiwarn-' prefixes from the message key, and maps some message keys for backwards compatibility.

Languages updated
MediaWiki supports over 350 languages. Many localisations are updated regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as changes to languages because of Phabricator reports.


 * Based as always on linguistic studies on intelligibility and language knowledge by geography, language fallbacks have been expanded. When a translation is missing in the user's preferred interface language, the corresponding translation for the fallback language will be used instead. English will only be used as last resort when there are no translations. Some configurations (such as date formats and gender namespaces) have also been updated when using the fallback language's configuration was inadequate. The new or reinstated language fallbacks are (after cs ↔ sk in 1.28): hsb ↔ dsb, io → eo, mdf → ru, pnt → el, roa-tara → it.

No fallback for Ukrainian

 * The fallback from Ukrainian to Russian was removed. The Ukrainian language will now use the default fallback language: English. When a translation to Ukrainian is not available, an English string will be shown.

Other changes

 * Database::getSearchEngine (deprecated in 1.28) was removed. Use SearchEngineFactory::getSearchEngineClass instead.
 * (deprecated in 1.20) was removed. No replacement is required as all sessions are stored in Object Cache now.
 * MWHttpRequest::execute should be considered to return a StatusValue; the Status return type is deprecated.
 * User::edits (deprecated in 1.21) was removed.
 * Xml::escapeJsString (deprecated in 1.21) was removed.
 * Article::getText and Article::prepareTextForEdit (deprecated in 1.21) were removed.
 * Article::getAutosummary and WikiPage::getAutosummary (deprecated in 1.21) were removed.
 * Hooks, and  (deprecated in 1.21) were removed.
 * Class  (deprecated in 1.25) was removed.
 * WikiPage::prepareTextForEdit (deprecated in 1.21) was removed.
 * WikiPage::getText (deprecated in 1.21) was removed.
 * Article::fetchContent (deprecated in 1.21) was removed.
 * User::getPassword (deprecated in 1.27) was removed.
 * User::getTemporaryPassword (deprecated in 1.27) was removed.
 * User::isPasswordReminderThrottled (deprecated in 1.27) was removed.
 * (deprecated in 1.19) was removed.

Compatibility
MediaWiki 1.29 requires PHP 5.5.9 or later. There is experimental support for HHVM 3.6.5 or later. MySQL is the recommended DBMS. PostgreSQL or SQLite can also be used, but support for them is somewhat less mature. There is experimental support for Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.

The supported versions are:


 * MySQL 5.0.3+
 * PostgreSQL 8.3+
 * SQLite 3.3.7+
 * Oracle 9.0.1+
 * Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (9.00.1399)

Upgrading
1.29 has several database changes since 1.28, and will not work without schema updates. Note that due to changes to some very large tables like the revision table, the schema update may take quite long (minutes on a medium sized site, many hours on a large site).

If upgrading from before 1.11, and you are using a wiki as a commons repository, make sure that it is updated as well. Otherwise, errors may arise due to database schema changes.

If upgrading from before 1.7, you may want to run refreshLinks.php to ensure new database fields are filled with data.

If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.4.x or earlier, you should upgrade to 1.5 first. The upgrade script maintenance/upgrade1_5.php has been removed with MediaWiki 1.21.

Don't forget to always backup your database before upgrading!

See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.

For notes on 1.28.x and older releases, see HISTORY.