Extension:CurrentUsers

MediaWiki extensions manual

CurrentUsers Release status: unmaintained
Implementation	Parser function , User activity
Description	Allows a list of currently active users to be embedded into a page using a template
Author(s)	Aran Dunkley (Nadtalk)
Latest version	1.0.10 (2010-12-14)
MediaWiki	-1.19.x
Database changes	No
License	GNU Lesser General Public License 2.1 only
Download	from external repository GitLab: project page git repository URL [help] commit history Note: No localisation updates are provided by translatewiki.net . CHANGELOG
Hooks used LanguageGetMagic
Check usage and version matrix.

The CurrentUsers allows a list of currently active users to be embedded into a page using a template. The list contains an entry for each of the logged in users who have accessed the wiki within an expiry period. The last two list items show the number of anonymous users and bots who have accessed the wiki within the expiry period.

The last access time of the user and their name or IP address is recorded in a file called CurrentUsers.txt which resides in the same directory as the main CurrentUsers.php script.

Note that currently the CurrentUsers.txt file must exist for the extension to work.

Installation

The downloaded zip file contains all extensions in the Git repository of OrganicDesign. You will have to unzip and just use the folder "CurrentUsers" to install this particular extension.

• Download and place the file(s) in a directory called CurrentUsers in your extensions/ folder.

• Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php:

  require_once "$IP/extensions/CurrentUsers/CurrentUsers.php";
  

• Configure as required.
• Create an empty file in the same directory too called "CurrentUsers.txt".
• Make the "CurrentUsers.txt" file writable to the web server.
• Create an template article called Template:CurrentUsers which will define the layout of the items. The first parameter is the time, the second is the username and the third is the number of guests (which is only used on the last line). Here's the one we use on our site which lists the items as a bullet list with the names linking to the associated user pages.

*{{{1}}}: {{#if:{{{2|}}}|[[User:{{{2}}}|{{{2}}}]]}}{{#if:{{{3|}}}|'''{{{3|}}}'''}}

•  Done – Navigate to Special:Version on your wiki to verify that the extension is successfully installed.

Usage

To add the list to an article, use the following parser function syntax:

{{#currentusers:}}

Robots

Currently the bot distinction works based on which users have requested the robots.txt file, and it only works if you have friendly URL's on such that the request gets treated as an article title request.

Most of the robots running around out there do not obey the robots exclusion standard and so do not bother to read the file to see what its rules say, or only read the rules for any particular site rarely. There are many databases of user-agent strings out there which could be downloaded periodically and some new web services cropping up which allow dynamic querying of user-agent strings. Incorporating one of these would allow the distinction of guests and robots to be more objective - this problem can never really be solved though because many bots are purposely trying to look identical to a normal browser.

• http://joseluis.pellicer.org/ua
• http://www.icehousedesigns.com/references

Configuration

Here are some global variables which affect the operation of the extension. These should be set in your LocalSettings file after the include of the script.

Variable	Default value	Meaning
$egCurrentUsersMagic	'currentusers'	The default parser-function name
$egCurrentUsersTemplate	'CurrentUsers'	The template article to use for formatting each entry in the list
$egCurrentUsersTimeout	60	The number of minutes of inactivity after which a user or guest is removed from the internal cache file

See also

• Extension:WhosOnline - similar extension which uses updates the database instead of a file