Manual:External editors

'''MediaWiki 1.5 or later required. Please also make sure you are using the latest version of the script if it is not working as expected.'''

The MediaWiki software allows you to edit any resource using any external tool. This is accomplished using a very simple system:


 * 1) When a resource is requested for being edited externally, MediaWiki sends out a control file that contains information about the resource; most importantly, its network location (URL) and the interface that is to be used for changing it.
 * 2) The user has to configure his or her browser so that the MIME type application/x-external-editor is associated with a special helper application. With Firefox 2 you can edit MIME type via "Tools/Options/Content/Manage".  (Firefox 1.x was notorious for its problematic MIME handling. A helper extension like Mime Type Editor 0.2 is recommended for older FF versions.)
 * 3) That helper application processes the control file, retrieves the resource, launches the favored application to edit it, and, if desired, saves the resource back to the server.

Examples of External Editor in use:

Helper application
There is a reference implementation for the helper application called "ee.pl" (available here, see README for usage and INSTALL for setup instructions). It is written in Perl and may be difficult to set up. However, it provides a complete set of features. Developers are welcome to write a more user friendly implementation, see Help:External editors/Tech for the specifications.

Note that the ee.pl GUI makes it very easy to save the data back to the server, including an edit summary, or to cancel the edit. You can also make multiple edits on the server by using the "Save and continue" button.

ee.pl as Java helper application
A version of this ee.pl script is available as a Java application at. It is still in development but the basic functions are working. These are 'Authentication at the Wiki', 'Download of the file', 'Open of the file with the standard application' and 'Upload the file back to the Wiki'. The Java GUI should once be a extended copy of the ee.pl script GUI.

Configuring ee.pl
For each wiki you want to use ee.pl with, add an entry like this to ee.ini:

[] URL match= Username=(MyUsername) Password=(MyPassword)

This is necessary so people can log in -- it does not know your password otherwise! Note that if you are active on many wikis, such as multiple Wikipedia languages editions, and you use the same username and password, you can simply use something like "wikipedia.org" or "wikimedia.org" with this authentication information as the URL match pattern (or indeed ".org" if you only intend to access these sites). An example generic entry:

[Generic] URL match=edia.org Username=(MyUsername) Password=(MyPassword)

Less is more! Just using  or   is sufficient, whereas adding the whole URL often causes an error.

Bookmarklet for text editing
You can invoke the external editor by using the following bookmarklet:

Create a new bookmark/favorite in your browser and copy this into the field where you would normally write the URL of a webpage you want to visit. Visit the bookmark/favorite whenever you want to use the external editor. Note that this requires the external editor tool to be set up as described above!