Extension:Math/en

The Math extension provides support for rendering mathematical formulae. An overview of what can currently be done with this extension is found at the English Wikipedia's documentation.

This article documents how to install, configure and test recent versions of this extension. For advanced usages and documentation of old versions refer to.

Not for shared hosting
This extension doesn't work on shared hosting. Use instead.

Configuration
Beginning from MW 1.23+ you can use a Mathoid server that uses MathJax to convert texvc input on the server side to MathML+SVG rendering. Mathoid is the rendering mode that is going to be used on future Wikipedia. For that the following settings are recommended:

Check out Mathoid to find instructions how to run your own Mathoid server.

Test your installation
Navigate to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MathStatus where you should replace en.wikipedia.org with the hostname of your wiki.

Troubleshooting
If tests don't work please make sure that your server can connect to. For a large variety of systems the following command is a good test:

sudo -u www-data curl -d 'q=E=mc^2' http://mathoid.testme.wmflabs.org/mml which should return the following MathML fragment

If that does not work create a task on https://phabricator.wikimedia.org

Purging pages that contain equations
Specifying the URL-parameter action=purge does not force the math equation to re-render the math tags. If a complete re-rendering of the math tags is desired the URL-parameter action=purge&mathpurge=true has to be passed. Be aware that this might cause side effects with other pages since the math extension uses the hash of the input TeX-input-string as the caching key. e.g. if you would force the re-rending with mathpurge option for a page containing the equation $E=mc^2$, the new rendering result would be used on all other pages containing $E=mc^2$ after the individual page caches are invalidated.

Error reporting
If something is wrong with the math extension you can report that at Phabricator. In addition you should check how your problem relates to the automated unit tests that are generated from the page CoverageTest.

The Math extension can do much more, beside the basics described here. Check out for old versions and further information.