User talk:Danwe

Hi Danwe -- saw your question in IRC but by the time I saw it you had left. I think this is what you're looking for: Manual:Tag extensions -- openbip


 * Thank you. But for some reason this won't work always. For example I try to execute a template with it and after adding/removing parameters or perhaps depending on the result it returns a void string instead of the templates value. Exactly the same template call above or after the function call returns the expected value... --Danwe 20:28, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Subpage Fun feedback
Hi Daniel,

Subpage Fun is a very useful extension as I'm using lots of subpages in part of my wiki. I've been using Extension:SubPageList but its features are quite limited. And DPL is of no use when dealing with subpages. I would like to see some features of Extension:SubPageFunctions in your extension, though, especially a feature to trim path names. Cheers, Frank --Nakohdo 20:02, 26 January 2011 (UTC)


 * You already have half the functionality of that function in Subpage Fun:  will return you the last 4 parts of the path for example. If you want some middle parts you could use #sub and #pos functions of Extension:StringFunctions and then #replace   with  . I don't like overloading the extension with all kind of parser functions for each possible use case. You can do a lot with other parser functions. Also RegexParserFunctions or Extension:ArrayExtension would do the trick very easily. Best you define a template for it. On the other hand, another parameter length and the possibility of a negative offset for   wouldn't harm either. If I have some time I might realize it. --Danwe 02:25, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * ^^ no, sorry, this doesn't really work. So I will think of something else, perhaps a  function. On the other hand, ArrayExtension would still do it. You would have to walk trough the array in the end and output it with:   --Danwe 02:44, 27 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Ok, see Extension talk:Subpage Fun for a final solution. --Danwe 03:38, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Slowness using HashTables
Hi! I'm experiencing slowness using HashTables extension to produce a manual index.

My aim is to use a certain user-editable index page as a base for a navtree, a frontpage and for another template to get to know the pages position in the index. Please see Chapter, Section, Index and NavTree (currently commented out for poor performances).

From my current experience, mediawiki doesn't cache the result of the hash table after the first time I see the result of a certain template, hence each time I visit the index and pages where I have the navtree (which is built using hash tables), the index or the navtree are re-calculated :/

Is there a way to tell the parser to cache the results of templates using this extension?

Can you help me to shed some light on this? Thanks in advance! --Mindrones 20:21, 10 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Template results are normally getting cached when the template is called without any params like  but as soon as you have one param it won't get cached anymore:   is enough for not getting cached. Actually, it's dangerous to cache a template which uses hashes, arrays or simple variables (Extension:VariablesExtension). This is because all variables are global, so when you change variables outside the template and then call the template again, you wouldn't get the expected output considering you just changed the variable. So be careful. If you don't intend to modify variables from outside the template caching the result would be fine so create a template which doesn't require any parameters and as long as you don't change your wikis default caching behavior it should get cached. --Danwe 23:35, 11 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Many thanks for the reply! Do you have any suggestions to speed up this system I have made? I wasn't expecting that managing that amount of links would have been so slow :( I'm currently experimenting with but it makes my templates overly complicated to maintain. Thanks, Mindrones 11:14, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

SRF and Array Result Format
Since the code of Array Result Format is shipping out now with SRF, maybe you could make a documentation about how to used it and give some examples. If you have trouble getting the documentation updated, contact. --MWJames 17:14, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Actually, I wrote a documentation a while ago. I put a description of the formats on the SRF main page as well. I'll look into putting the documentation on semantic-mediawiki.org as well. --Danwe 16:02, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Heiya, I just moved the documentation over to semantic-mediawiki.org. Thus I would like to invite you over too. I will provide you with the contributor rights as soon as you arrived. Cheers and see you there --&#91;&#91;kgh&#93;&#93; 22:03, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Extra download packages for your extensions
Hi Daniel, it would perhaps be advisabel to provide an extra download for each version you create like it is done for most of the SMW extensions. The extension distributor is not very good then it comes to strictly versionised software. Users have otherwise no chance to retrieve the exact revision of the software. Cheers --&#91;&#91;kgh&#93;&#93; 15:31, 22 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I've been thinking about this for some time, just haven't had the time to set it up by now. I just wonder whether there will be a better extension distributor after we switch from svn to git? In that case I would probably keep waiting. --Danwe 19:13, 24 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, I do not know but I do not really believe it will be better then. Anyway the switch to git will probably take more time than expected so we should not hold our breath until this is done. ;) However, one advantage of an extra download is, that you get a better idea of how often an extension gets downloaded and is used. Cheers --&#91;&#91;kgh&#93;&#93; 19:28, 24 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Alright, I guess I am convinced, I'll look into it soon. --Danwe 19:38, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

hello danwe
I noticed you did some editing on extension:Variables you really seem to know what you are talking about, as I wrote to Nad, User_talk:Nad, I am at wits end trying to reverse engineer a really incredible map using Extension:Variables. I have spent so many hours trying to get this to work. Could I request your significant expertise?

Here are the full details with pictures!

If you are busy, could you recommend someone else i can talk to, or somewhere else I can post asking for help? You are welcome to edit the wiki pages.

Have a great week. thank you :) Igottheconch 09:03, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Ummm, I have solved the thing, look into the forum for details. Took quite some time though, normally I don't do this, consider it my obsession with complex templates and the extensive use of evil extensions which made me feel like I couldn't resist giving it a try. There won't be a second time though, can't afford working for free on all kinds of projects really, of course one could hire me for all kind of wiki works to be done. Have a nice week as well! --Danwe 15:36, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * you do wiki work? I need some help with some large error files which crash my wiki. Do you do work by the project or by the hour. You are welcome to answer here or email me. We really need to talk!
 * Would you like a paypal donation for your time? Igottheconch 17:09, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * RE: Template:Overlay2 I removed a hell of a lot from the template, including the legend, etc. Down to "only" 11 pages. The customimages popups are not displaying the same thing -- i have some ideas why and I will work on it, thank you so much for your time! Igottheconch 22:52, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Map text move when map resized but icons don't
Hello, hope you are enjoying your weekend!

I got everything to work with the map! Thank you for your help! Could you direct me in the right direction on how to fix a newer problem that has come up? The map text you helped me create moves when the map is resized, but the icons don't move, they stay in the same place....

On that page I added html differences, etc. Any help would be most appreciated! I really have no idea why the icons stay in the same place but the text does not. Igottheconch 17:47, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * THANK YOU so much. you are always so helpful :) what is quick easy for you, the expert in coding takes days for me. you are a godsend. Igottheconch 21:21, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * HA thanks! i just fixed it, appreciate it very much! Igottheconch 02:36, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

if you are bored
moved to User:Igottheconch/Map :) Igottheconch 22:57, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * good idea to move this, my talk page got rather full with that map stuff ;) I think you are on the best way of becoming a good template programmer! I'll just add that page to my watch-list as well. --Danwe 00:49, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * your too kind, I tend to update incisively my posts, so if you are online, it would drive you crazy!
 * I attempted to contact the creator of Extension:Balloons as I believe that the issue can be solved there.
 * I am slowly learning your variables extension, I have made some minor edits to the page, and will continue to add more. thank you again, Igottheconch 00:29, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
 * after days i just edited the .php extension file, add was able to change the font color of internal links :) thanks for listening! Now onto the next project. Igottheconch 04:15, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

A new kind of flexibility
Hi Daniel! I'm responsible for SMWCon Fall 2012 program and I want to ask you about your A new kind of Flexibility talk. Could you please add more details about the technical side of the talk? The problems you denominated in your Wikimania talk are surely very important, but they should be more specific, than the problems that SMW solves.

I invite you to work on your talks in semantic-mediawiki.org wiki or you can just continue development on Wikimania page. Katkov Yury (talk) 07:06, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

OL image layers in Maps
Hello. I asked Jeroen_De_Dauw a question and he mentioned you. Is image layers support still a planned feature ? I notice you don't recommend using some of these extensions in large wiki's. Does that include Maps ? My project may potentially become a large system for allowing collaborative commenting and marking of space images, mainly of planetary surfaces. DJBarney24 (talk) 12:24, 19 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Hey. That advice of mine about not using some of the extensions I created goes mainly towards Variables, Arrays and HashTables, perhaps Regex Fun and Parser Fun as well. This is for really huge wikis with a huge community where users would end up writing very complex templates with those. In simple words, I put this comment there for people not thinking I want those on Wikipedia, questioning my sanity, that'd be rather annoying.
 * About Maps: I think that's a great extension and I am only working on a small part of it right now, the re-integration of the custom image layers. If you want to try this new feature right now, simply check out this Maps branch on GIT. I am afraid there isn't much of documentation on this yet. Basically, custom map layers are defined on pages in the Layer namespace. You have to run updates.php after getting this branch if you want to use the feature, it does changes to the database. If you get this to work, I could also give you further information on how to setup your custom image based layers. --Danwe 20:15, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks ! I'll get a separate testing installation of Mediawiki set up in order to check this out DJBarney24 (talk) 17:03, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, took me a while to get to this. Setting up now. Just to avoid any potential problems is it still the same Git branch ? What about Mediawiki itself ... install the latest version ? DJBarney24 (talk) 13:11, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, this should all work fine, I didn't change anything on that branch yet, its waiting for review. I created a little installation instructions page where you can find little more detail about how to display your first custom map. I hope it will help! --Danwe (talk) 21:35, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

More about your talk on SMWCon 2012
Hello Daniel! Could you please add the up-to-date description of your talk to the page on semantic-mediawiki.org wiki (preferably create the subpage of SMWCon_Fall_2012 page, like to the RPG-Dev-Wiki Project SMWCon_Fall_2012/Introduction to the RPG-Dev-Wiki Project) and give a link to me? We have only 30 minutes for your talk, will you talk about RPG Wiki?

If you don't have time now to submit the abstract now, please just confirm that you will attend the conference. Also don't forget to register, the early bird sales will be over soon! Katkov Yury (talk) 10:24, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Hello Yury! Sorry for not getting back to you earlier. I will still most likely join the conference. I might look into doing an up to date abstract next week. I am thinking about putting both talks together since RPG-Dev-Wiki makes extensive use of the Semantic Expressiveness extension which was going to be the topic of my first talk. I might send you a mail with some further thoughts on this if you don't mind. --Danwe (talk) 16:48, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Ok, please do! katkov.juriy on Google Coolest Possible Mail Hosting. I'm excited to help you! I also think that it's a good idea to merge the two talks into one: you won't need to explain what is SMW and structured data on the wiki and will be able to concentrate on a main thing. There will be the most qualified audience in the world. Katkov Yury (talk) 19:16, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Variables extension
Hi Danwe,

Love the variables extension, but I assume you're referring it as one of those extensions you would not recommend on a large public wiki. I have a gigantic wiki, 10 million plus pages, and would love to use the variables extension but I'm afraid of a big problem. Your thoughts?


 * Hi! It is difficult to make a judgment on this without knowing some details of your Wiki. In general, the extension makes a lot of things easier and more flexible. It is just the question whether you want to allow your users (if all of them can edit) to write templates using variables. You can make very complex templates with Variables enabled. On the other hand, people make very complex and unreadable templates without Variables as well - so at least those could be done in a simpler way with Variables enabled. I don't have huge security concerns. Variables could perhaps offer a way of attempting some sort of DoS by putting huge text into a variable "A", defining another variable "B" whose content is 10 times variable "A", then re-defining "A" with 10 times "B" and so on. At some point, PHP would simply run out of memory when parsing the page. I actually never experimented with this and there is no limitation for variables usage to prevent this. --Danwe (talk) 22:23, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Extension:Regex Fun
The vulnerability allows for execution of arbitrary PHP code, I will not go into more details in public but I can email you a POC if you'd like. The vulnerability was originally reported by User:Pastakhov and affects not only your extension, but all three regex extensions on mediawiki.org (I've patched mine already, not sure of the status of RegexParserFunctions). A patchset on gerrit exists for your extension, I recommend reviewing it and making adjustments as needed (e.g. version number). -- Skiz zerz  07:44, 8 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I have implemented a similar function in my extension foxway. When I did it, found the hidden potential security issue, allow to execute arbitrary commands on the server. I checked the existing MediaWiki extension, and found that three out of four of these extensions, it is possible to exploit this security issue. If the problem was only one extension, I would have contacted the author and warned him about the problem. But since the issue concerns several extensions, and I know that the authors are often quite a long time to respond to requests, I sent patches to Gerrit and marked all the extensions as dangerous to use. What else can I do for you? --Pastakhov (talk) 06:12, 13 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you both, I will look into this change set. I also found another potential exploit, though, not sure yet. Have to find some time to look into this a little further. --Danwe (talk) 03:49, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Creating wikis with Simple Farm
How do I create the wiki once I add the settings for the new wiki to the wiki farm file? Is it possible to use a single database? Possibly by by using $wgDBprefix? Do I need to run the update script after adding the configuration for the new wiki so it adds the tables? ఠ_ఠ Inquisitor Sasha Ehrenstein des Sturmkrieg Sector (Talk) (Contr) 17:09, 8 September 2013 (UTC)


 * The information which database to use for each wiki has to be part of the configuration as in the examples. Then you can run the maintenance/update.php script for that farm. Currently the extension does not support $wgDBprefix simply because I did not need it (I prefer one DB per wiki). Would not be too hard to implement this I guess. --Danwe (talk) 23:19, 8 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Please have all further discussion on the extension page, no good in having this conversation twice. --Danwe (talk) 23:29, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Adding single database functionality to Simple Farm
Hi Dan,

Firstly, thanks for Simple Farm. I'm working on a project for WikiWorks which needed some additional functionality. Namely a shared database with table prefixes, and shared user and interwiki tables.

I've added this functionality, which involved changing the way Simple Farm manages it's representation of members to generate an id from prefix+db; I'm pretty sure all the changes I've made are non-breaking.

Would you be happy to have this merged in?

Cheers Andrujhon (talk)


 * Hi Andrujhon! Some people have been asking me for this feature but I have not been getting around to implementing it. So I am sure some would appreciate this. If you commit this on gerrit, I would gladly have a look at it. --Danwe (talk) 02:53, 21 January 2014 (UTC)