Release notes/1.29

MediaWiki 1.29
THIS IS NOT A RELEASE YET

MediaWiki 1.29 is an alpha-quality branch and is not recommended for use in production.

Configuration changes in 1.29

 * 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 resetpassword right and associated password reset capture feature has been removed.
 * The $error parameter to the EmailUser 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 $message parameter to the ApiCheckCanExecute hook should be set to an ApiMessage. This is compatible with MediaWiki 1.27 and later. Returning a code for ApiBase::parseMsg will no longer work.
 * ApiBase::$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 [NS_TEMPLATE] to false to keep the old behavior.
 * is now false by default (T142751). This change only affects wikis with > 0.
 * (T158474) "Unknown user" has been added to.
 * (T156983) now accepts CIDR ranges as well as single IPs.
 * is deprecated. Additional language code mappings may be added to instead.
 * (T161453) LocalisationCache will no longer use the temporary directory in it's fallback chain when trying to work out where to write the cache.
 * The user right 'editusercssjs' (deprecated in 1.16) was removed. Use 'editusercss' and 'edituserjs' in and elsewhere instead.

New features in 1.29

 * (T5233) 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.
 * Added new setting. Sets timeout for downloading the XML dump during a transwiki import in seconds.
 * Parser limit report is now available in machine-readable format to JavaScript via mw.config.get('wgPageParseReport').
 * Added, to allow for automatically blocking anonymous edits from certain IP ranges (e.g. private IPs).
 * (T59603) Added new magic word  which returns the language code of the page being parsed.
 * HTML5 form validation attributes will no longer be suppressed. Originally browsers had poor support for them, but modern browsers handle them fine. This might affect some forms that used them and only worked because the attributes were not actually being set.
 * Expiry times can now be specified when users are added to user groups.
 * Completely new user interface for the RecentChanges page, which structures filters into user-friendly groups. This has corresponding changes to how filters are registered by core and extensions.
 * The edit form now uses pretty OOjs UI buttons, checkboxes and summary input. Because this change can cause problems for extensions and on-wiki scripts depending on the exact HTML, the old version is still available and can be used by setting = false; in LocalSettings.php. This will be removed later and OOjs UI will become the only option. To make testing easier, users can also force either mode by adding &ooui=true or &ooui=false to the action=edit URL.

Upgraded external libraries

 * Updated QUnit from v1.22.0 to v1.23.1.
 * Updated cssjanus from v1.1.2 to v1.2.0.
 * Updated psr/log from v1.0.0 to v1.0.2.
 * Update Moment.js from v2.8.4 to v2.15.0.
 * Updated oyejorge/less.php from v1.7.0.10 to v1.7.0.14.
 * Updated monolog from v1.18.2 to 1.22.1.
 * Updated wikimedia/composer-merge-plugin from v1.3.1 to v1.4.0.
 * Updated OOjs from v1.1.10 to v2.0.0.
 * Updated jQuery from v1.11.3 to v3.2.1 (including jQuery Migrate v3.0.0).

New external libraries

 * Added wikimedia/timestamp v1.0.0.
 * Added wikimedia/remex-html v1.0.1.

Bug fixes in 1.29

 * (T62604) Core parser functions returning a number now format the number according to the page content language, not wiki content language.
 * (T27187) Search suggestions based on jquery.suggestions will now correctly only highlight prefix matches in the results.
 * (T157035) "new mw.Uri" was ignoring options when using default URI.
 * Special:Allpages can no longer be filtered by redirect in miser mode.
 * (T160519) CACHE_ANYTHING will not be CACHE_ACCEL if no accelerator is installed.
 * (T109140) (T122209) SECURITY: Special:UserLogin and Special:Search allow redirect to interwiki links.
 * (T144845) SECURITY: XSS in SearchHighlighter::highlightText when is true.
 * (T125177) SECURITY: API parameters may now be marked as "sensitive" to keep their values out of the logs.
 * (T150044) SECURITY: "Mark all pages visited" on the watchlist now requires a CSRF token.
 * (T156184) SECURITY: Escape content model/format url parameter in message.
 * (T151735) SECURITY: SVG filter evasion using default attribute values in DTD declaration.
 * (T161453) SECURITY: LocalisationCache will no longer use the temporary directory in it's fallback chain when trying to work out where to write the cache.
 * (T48143) SECURITY: Spam blacklist ineffective on encoded URLs inside file inclusion syntax's link parameter.
 * (T108138) SECURITY: Sysops can undelete pages, although the page is protected against it.

Action API changes in 1.29

 * Submitting sensitive authentication request parameters to action=login, action=clientlogin, action=createaccount, action=linkaccount, and action=changeauthenticationdata in the query string is now an error. They should be submitted in the POST body instead.
 * The capture option for action=resetpassword has been removed
 * action=clearhasmsg now requires a POST.
 * (T47843) API errors and warnings may be requested in non-English languages using the new 'errorformat', 'errorlang', and 'errorsuselocal' 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.
 * ApiPageSet-using modules will report the 'invalidreason' using the specified 'errorformat'.
 * action=emailuser may return a "Warnings" status, and now returns 'warnings' and 'errors' subelements (as applicable) instead of 'message'.
 * action=imagerotate returns an 'errors' subelement rather than 'errormessage'.
 * action=move now reports errors when moving the talk page as an array under key 'talkmove-errors', rather than using 'talkmove-error-code' and 'talkmove-error-info'. The format for subpage move errors has also changed.
 * action=revisiondelete no longer includes a "rendered" property on warnings and errors for each item. Use errorformat=wikitext if you're wanting parsed output.
 * action=rollback no longer returns a "messageHtml" property. Use errorformat=html if you're wanting HTML formatting of error messages.
 * action=upload now reports optional stash failures as an array under key 'stasherrors' rather than a 'stashfailed' text string.
 * action=watch reports 'errors' and 'warnings' instead of a single 'error', and no longer returns a 'message' on success.
 * Added action=validatepassword to validate passwords for the account creation and password change forms.
 * action=purge now requires a POST.
 * There is a new `languagevariants` siprop for action=query&meta=siteinfo, which returns a list of languages with active LanguageConverter instances.
 * action=query&query=allpages will no longer filter redirects using a database query in miser mode. This may result in less results being returned than were requested.

Action API internal changes in 1.29

 * 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 ApiCheckCanExecute 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.
 * UsageException is deprecated in favor of ApiUsageException. For the time being ApiUsageException is a subclass of UsageException to allow things that catch only UsageException to still function properly.
 * If, for some strange reason, code was using an ApiErrorFormatter instead of ApiErrorFormatter_BackCompat, 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.
 * API parameters may now be marked as "sensitive" to keep their values out of the logs.

extension.json changes in 1.29

 * Extensions must set a value for "manifest_version" in their extension.json or skin.json files. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Extension.json/Schema#manifest_version for details.
 * Extensions can now specify dependencies upon other extensions by using the "requires" key. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Extension.json/Schema#requires for more details.
 * (T151136) Functions set as the "callback" now recieve that extension's credits information as the first argument.
 * (T149597) "PasswordPolicy" can be set in extension.json.

Languages updated in 1.29
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): ca ↔ oc; hsb ↔ dsb; io → eo; mdf → ru; pnt → el; roa-tara → it; rup → ro; sh → bs, sr-el, hr.
 * (T137376) New language support: Atikamekw (atj).
 * (T163600) New language support: Dinka (din).
 * (T155957) Talk Namespaces for Javanese language (jv) have been updated.

No fallback for Ukrainian

 * (T39314) 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 in 1.29
RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^/w/wiki\.phtml$ /w/index.php [R=301,L]
 * 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.
 * Hook ArticleViewCustom (deprecated in 1.21) was removed. Use ArticleContentViewCustom instead.
 * Hooks EditPageGetDiffText and ShowRawCssJs (deprecated in 1.21) were removed.
 * Class RevisiondeleteAction (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.
 * Class FSRepo (deprecated in 1.19) was removed.
 * WebRequest::checkSessionCookie (deprecated in 1.27) was removed. Use \MediaWiki\Session\SessionManager::singleton->getPersistedSessionId instead.
 * Class ImageGallery (deprecated in 1.22) was removed. Use ImageGalleryBase::factory instead.
 * Title::moveNoAuth (deprecated in 1.25) was removed. Use MovePage class instead.
 * Hook UnknownAction (deprecated in 1.19) was actually deprecated (it will now emit warnings). Create a subclass of Action and add it to instead.
 * WikiRevision::getText (deprecated since 1.21) is no longer marked deprecated.
 * Linker::getInterwikiLinkAttributes (deprecated since 1.25) was removed.
 * Linker::getInternalLinkAttributes (deprecated since 1.25) was removed.
 * Linker::getInternalLinkAttributesObj (deprecated since 1.25) was removed.
 * Linker::getLinkAttributesInternal (deprecated since 1.25) was removed.
 * RedisConnectionPool::handleException (deprecated since 1.23) was removed.
 * The static properties mw.Api.errors and mw.Api.warnings, containing incomplete and outdated lists of errors/warnings returned by the API, are now deprecated.
 * wiki.phtml entry point was removed. Refer to index.php instead. If you want "wiki.phtml" URLs to continue to work, set up redirects. In Apache, this can be done by enabling mod_rewrite and adding the following rules to your configuration:
 * Hook ArticleAfterFetchContent (deprecated in 1.21) was removed. Use ArticleAfterFetchContentObject instead.
 * Hook ArticleInsertComplete (deprecated in 1.21) was removed. Use PageContentInsertComplete instead.
 * Hook ArticleSave (deprecated in 1.21) was removed. Use PageContentSave instead.
 * Hook ArticleSaveComplete (deprecated in 1.21) was removed. Use PageContentSaveComplete instead.
 * Hook EditFilterMerged (deprecated in 1.21) was removed. Use EditFilterMergedContent instead.
 * Hook EditPageGetPreviewText (deprecated in 1.21) was removed. Use EditPageGetPreviewContent instead.
 * Hook TitleIsCssOrJsPage (deprecated in 1.21) was removed. Use ContentHandlerDefaultModelFor instead.
 * Hook TitleIsWikitextPage (deprecated in 1.21) was removed. Use ContentHandlerDefaultModelFor instead.
 * Article::getContent (deprecated in 1.21) was removed.
 * Revision::getText (deprecated in 1.21) was removed.
 * Article::doEdit and WikiPage::doEdit (deprecated in 1.21) were removed.
 * Parser::replaceUnusualEscapes (deprecated in 1.24) was removed.
 * Article::doEditContent was marked as deprecated, to be removed in 1.30 or later.
 * ContentHandler::runLegacyHooks was removed.
 * refreshLinks.php now can be limited to a particular category with --category=... or a tracking category with --tracking-category=...
 * User-like objects that are passed to SpecialUserRights and its subclasses are now required to have a getGroupMemberships method. See UserRightsProxy for an example.
 * User::$mGroups (instance variable) was marked private. Use User::getGroups instead.
 * User::getGroupName, User::getGroupMember, User:getGroupPage, User::makeGroupLinkHTML, and User::makeGroupLinkWiki were deprecated. Use equivalent methods on the UserGroupMembership class.
 * Maintenance scripts and tests that call User::addGroup must now ensure that User objects have been added to the database prior to calling addGroup.
 * Protected function UsersPager::getGroups was removed, and protected function UsersPager::buildGroupLink was changed from a static to an instance method.
 * The third parameter ($cache) to the UsersPagerDoBatchLookups hook was changed; see docs/hooks.txt.
 * User::crypt (deprecated in 1.24) was removed.
 * User::comparePasswords (deprecated in 1.24) was removed.
 * ArchivedFile::getUserText (deprecated in 1.23) was removed.
 * HTMLFileCache::newFromTitle (deprecated in 1.24) was removed.
 * BREAKING CHANGE: Internal signature changes to ChangesListSpecialPage and subclasses. It should only break if you call buildMainQueryConds (changed to buildQuery with new signature) or doMainQuery (new signature). Subclasses are likely to call at least doMainQuery (possibly both), but other classes might too, because they were public.
 * Also, some related hooks were deprecated, but this is not yet a breaking change.
 * Removed 'jquery.arrowSteps' module. (deprecated since 1.28)
 * The 'jquery.autoEllipsis' ResourceLoader module is now deprecated.
 * WikiRevision::$fileIsTemp was deprecated.
 * WikiRevision::$importer was deprecated.
 * WikiRevision::$user was deprecated.
 * Article::getLastPurgeTimestamp, WikiPage::getLastPurgeTimestamp, and the WikiPage::PURGE_* constants are deprecated, and the functions will always return false. They were a hack for an issue that has since been fixed.
 * Hook 'EditPageBeforeEditChecks' is now deprecated. Instead use the new hook 'EditPageGetCheckboxesDefinition', or 'EditPage::showStandardInputs:options' if you don't actually care about checkboxes and just want to add some HTML to the page.
 * Selflinks are now rendered as href-less &lt;a&gt; tags with the class mw-selflink rather than &lt;strong&gt; tags. The old class name, "selflink", was deprecated and will be removed in a future release. (T160480)
 * (T156184) will no longer apply to internationalization messages.
 * Browser support for non-ES5 JavaScript browsers, including Android 2, Opera <12.10, and Internet Explorer 9, was lowered from Grade A to Grade C.
 * Removed wikibits global methods deprecated since MediaWiki 1.17 (T122755): is_gecko, is_chrome_mac, is_chrome, webkit_version, is_safari_win, is_safari, webkit_match, is_ff2, ff2_bugs, is_ff2_win, is_ff2_x11, opera95_bugs, opera7_bugs, opera6_bugs, is_opera_95, is_opera_preseven, is_opera, ie6_bugs, clientPC, changeText, killEvt, addHandler, hookEvent, addClickHandler, removeHandler, getElementsByClassName, getInnerText, setupCheckboxShiftClick, addCheckboxClickHandlers, mwEditButtons, mwCustomEditButtons, injectSpinner, removeSpinner, escapeQuotes, escapeQuotesHTML, jsMsg, addPortletLink, appendCSS, tooltipAccessKeyPrefix, tooltipAccessKeyRegexp, updateTooltipAccessKeys.
 * The ID of the &lt;li&gt; element containing the login link has changed from 'pt-login' to 'pt-login-private' in private wikis.
 * The old, neglected "bulletin board style toolbar" in the edit form is now deprecated (T30856). This old code dates from 2006, and was replaced in the MediaWiki release tarball and in Wikimedia production by the WikiEditor extension in 2010. It is only shown to users if no other editor was installed, and leads to confusion.
 * (T92459) Loading ResourceLoader modules containing JavaScript through addModuleStyles is deprecated and will log a warning server-side.

Compatibility
MediaWiki 1.29 requires PHP 5.5.9 or later. There is experimental support for HHVM 3.6.5 or later.

MySQL/MariaDB 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 or later
 * PostgreSQL 8.3 or later
 * SQLite 3.3.7 or later
 * Oracle 9.0.1 or later
 * 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).

Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!

See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions, including important information when upgrading from versions prior to 1.11.

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

Online documentation
Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is available on MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation License (except for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in the public domain):
 * https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Documentation

Mailing list
A mailing list is available for MediaWiki user support and discussion:
 * https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:
 * https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce

It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.

IRC help
There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net.