Extension:CategorySubscriptions

The CategorySubscriptions extension allows a user to subscribe to categories and receive daily email updates of the changes that occurred within each category during the previous day.

The goal of this extension is to allow a user to easily watch changes that occur within a category. Categories can be added directly (one category at a time) or by viewing a wiki page and viewing all the categories that wiki page belongs too.

Update
The code has undergone a major update. Please visit the new project home to get the newest source code.

This wiki page and the new Google code page will be updated in the near future to reflect the new changes.

Pear
The following Pear packages are required for the php emailing script. If you do not have Pear installed you will have to install it in additon to these required packages.
 * Mail
 * Net_SMTP (if using smtp to send emails)
 * Net_socket (dependent of net_smtp)

If you are using a different emailing protocol other than SMTP you will have to configure the mailer script and Pear as needed.

SQL Table
'''An installer script is now provided to create the table automatically. The following is left for reference.'''

A new table must be created in the mediawiki database. The table is very simple and has only 3 columns
 * id - unique identifier for each column (auto-increment)
 * user_id - the id of the user making the subscription
 * category - the name of the category to be subscribed too

The SQL statement to create the table (note: only tested on MySQL database):

If your MediaWiki installation has a database prefix, be sure to prefix it to the table name. Example, if $wgDBprefix="mw" then your table name will be "mwcategory_subscriptions"

Installation
This section will be updated to reflect the new procedure...


 * 1) Install required Pear packages and create new table in database
 * 2) Create directory "CategorySubscriptions" under the extensions folder of your wiki installation
 * 3) Copy all 3 php files (CategorySubscriptions.php, CategorySubscriptions.i18n.php, CategorySubscriptionsMailer.php) into the folder you just created
 * 4) Add the following code to your LocalSettings.php file:
 * 5) Configure the mailer script (database host, user name, password, etc...)
 * 6) Using your favorite automation method, set the CategorySubscriptionsMailer.php script to run every morning.

Usage
New and improved usage instructions will be up shortly, as the interface to the extension changed slightly.