Help:Magic links

Magic links are a feature of MediaWiki core that create automatic links for three hardcoded external identifiers. As of MediaWiki 1.28, this feature is disabled by default but may be enabled using the $wgEnableMagicLinks configuration parameter.

Examples:

• ISBN 0-7475-3269-9 → ISBN 0-7475-3269-9
• PMID 1234 → PMID 1234
• RFC 1234 → RFC 1234

ISBN is hardcoded to link to Special:Booksources, while the URLs for PMID and RFC can be changed by editing the system messages pubmedurl and rfcurl, respectively.

Alternatives

Because magic links are hardcoded and inflexible, you can also use more straightforward interwiki or links:

• [[Special:Booksources/0-7475-3269-9|ISBN 0-7475-3269-9]] → ISBN 0-7475-3269-9
• [[pmid:1234|PMID 1234]] → PMID 1234
• [[rfc:1234|RFC 1234]] → RFC 1234

Creating local templates similar to Wikipedia's w:Template:ISBN, w:Template:IETF RFC, and w:Template:PMID or Wikiversity's v:Template:ISBN, v:Template:RFC, and v:Template:PMID may be useful.

See also

• w:Help:Magic links
• Requests for comment/Future of magic links