User:Austin J. Che/Extensions/Recentchangesfilter

Special:Recentchanges Filtering

The standard recent changes list can be overwhelming on a large site with the number of changes. This extension allows users to track a subset of changes that they are interested in and allows users to set preferences for the default filters to use when displaying the recent changes list.

General Usage

The key to using this extension is to create desired filters. A filter is used in several possible ways. The filter can be passed as parameters at the end of the URL as extra path info, e.g. /wiki/Special:Recentchanges/parameters. They can also be passed with the real script path as in /index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&filter=parameters. A URL created in this manner can be either bookmarked in a browser, linked from a wiki page, or directly included within another wiki page (see below).

Logged in users also have the ability to set their preferences (with help from the PreferencesExtension). When that extension is also installed, several additional options are added under the recent changs tab of a user's preferences. The enable filtering option turns on or off default filtering. With this option off, when the recent changes page is accessed without a filter in the URL, a normal recent changes page is returned (all results). If this option is enabled, then the other options determine the behavior of the Special:Recentchanges page when accessed without a filter. The filter list is of the form [name1]filter1...;[name2]filter2...;[name3]filter3 for as many filters as one would like to define. The [name] part is optional but if not specified, the default name will be the filter number. The last preference allows specifying the default filter (by number, with the first filter numbered 0). When a user access the recent changes page, the default filter will be used if no other filter is given. In addition, the page will contain easy links to switch between all the filters listed on their filter list. An empty filter will always match everything and it is probably a good idea to always include this somewhere in one's list.

Filter Specification

The filter is specified as a boolean statement in disjunctive normal form (groups of expressions ANDed together that are then all ORed together).

Expression

The general form for an expression is <match type>=<match pattern>.

Match types are 1 or 2 letter codes and specify how the match pattern should be used in selecting items to display in the recent changes list. The basic types and their meaning:

• b: titles that begin with the pattern
• e: titles that end with the pattern
• c: titles that contain the pattern
• m: titles that match where the match expression can contain any number of the '%' character to represent a wildcard character that matches any number of charaters. This is a more general version of the b, e, and c types.
• n: The match pattern should be either a number corresponding to a namespace or the name of a namespace. This matches all pages that are in the given namespace. The main namespace has number 0 and doesn't have a name so you have to use the number. For other namespaces, you can use the name (e.g. 'User talk') or you can find the number by selecting the namespace in the dropdown list of the recent changes page, click go, and look at the URL to determine the namespace to number mapping. There's also a namespace called 'Special' with number -1 that includes pages like the upload log.
• u: match changes that were done by the given user
• w: match changes for pages on your (or whoever's currently logged in) watchlist. The match pattern is ignored so it can just be set to 1 or left off completely.

All of the above types have a negated version with an extra n in front, i.e. nb, ne, nc, etc. For example, nb=foo will match all pages that don't begin with foo.

If no match type is specified (there is no equals sign), then the matching will be done with the default type of b.

Note that for the purpose of selecting pages by titles, it is necessary to be clear which namespace a page is in. For example, the page User:Austin is not a page titled User:Austin but rather a page titled Austin in the namespace User. Thus, b=User won't match this page but either b=Austin or n=User would. Pages like Knight:Contact are in the main namespace so b=Contact wouldn't match this whereas b=Knight would.

Joining Expressions

'^' is used to represent AND and ',' (comma) is used to represent OR. Expressions are assumed to be in disjunctive normal form so there's an intrinsic parenthesis order (and no way to change this order). This means that all the ANDs have higher precedence than the ORs.

Examples

• Select pages that begin with Calendar: Special:Recentchanges/b=Calendar or more simply Special:Recentchanges/Calendar
• Ignore all changes made by User:Austin: Special:Recentchanges/nu=Austin
• Show changes for pages on your watchlist (in a nicer format than you can with the default watchlist): Special:Recentchanges/w=1
• Filter out all pages with a colon in them and pages not in the main namespace: Special:Recentchanges/n=0^nc=:
• Select pages that begin with either Endy or Knight and limit to the last 10 changes: Special:Recentchanges/Endy,Knight&limit=10
• Select pages that have changed in User namespace except for people's user names that end with the letter n or pages that contain the letters a, b, c in that order or that are on your watchlist (demonstrating that you can do useless things to waste time with this extension): Special:Recentchanges/n=User^ne=n,m=%a%b%c%,w=1

Including within another page

The special page can be included using the standard {{Special:Recentchanges/parameters)}} syntax. This allows including a select list of changes on a page. For example, here's a live demo showing the last 5 changes of articles in the main namespace that do not have a ':' in their name (uncategorized/general pages):

List of abbreviations:

N

This edit created a new page (also see list of new pages)

m

This is a minor edit

b

This edit was performed by a bot

(±123)

The page size changed by this number of bytes

26 April 2024

11:38

Hu:Publications‎ diffhist +308‎ Hugangqing talk contribs

			N    08:47		The Paper that Launched Microfluidics - Xi Ning‎‎ 2 changes history +16,815‎ [Xning098‎ (2×)]
					08:47 (cur | prev) −1‎ Xning098 talk contribs (→‎Introduction)
			N		08:43 (cur | prev) +16,816‎ Xning098 talk contribs (Created page with "{{Template:CHEM-ENG590E}} ==Introduction== Microfluidics is the science and technology of systems that process or manipulate small (10 <sup> -18 </sup> to 10 <sup>−18 </sup> litres) amounts of fluids, using channels with dimensions of tens to hundreds of micrometres, as stated by George Whitesides. <sup> https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05058 1 </sup>. Microfluidic devices are microchemical systems such as labs on the chip, organs on the chip and plants on the chip....")

			08:43		CHEM-ENG590E:Wiki Textbook‎‎ 3 changes history 0‎ [Xning098‎ (3×)]
					08:43 (cur | prev) 0‎ Xning098 talk contribs Tag: Manual revert
					08:42 (cur | prev) 0‎ Xning098 talk contribs Tag: Manual revert
					08:41 (cur | prev) 0‎ Xning098 talk contribs

			08:20		(Upload log)‎ [Xning098‎ (6×)]
					08:20 Xning098 talk contribs uploaded File:XiNingFigure2.jpeg ‎
					08:14 Xning098 talk contribs uploaded File:Figure4Drawn.XiNing.jpeg ‎
					08:00 Xning098 talk contribs uploaded File:DrawnFigure4XiNing.jpeg ‎
					07:38 Xning098 talk contribs uploaded File:XiNingDrawnSetup2.png ‎
					07:35 Xning098 talk contribs uploaded a new version of File:Figure 2 Set-up1.png ‎
					07:24 Xning098 talk contribs uploaded File:DrawnElectoosmoticflow.jpeg ‎

05:25

Ernesto-Perez-Rueda:Contact‎ diffhist −94‎ Ernesto Perez-Rueda talk contribs

25 April 2024

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Send bugs and comments to Austin Che. Other extensions including sources can be found at User:Austin J. Che/Extensions.