Professional Wikis

Chapter 6. Page Actions and Version Control

In the previous two chapters, you learned how to edit pages with wikitext, as well as how to upload images. There is a lot more that you can do with a page (or to a page). Some of the concepts have been touched on in previous chapters, but this chapter focuses on two closely related topics: what MediaWiki calls actions, and MediaWiki's approach to version control.

You've already been exposed to actions in previous chapters. Viewing a page is an action, for example, as is editing a page, moving a page, or deleting a page. Beyond that, you can perform actions such as protecting pages, reverting to earlier revisions, comparing changes, and so on.

Technically speaking, an action is invoked by passing a parameter in the URL of an HTTP GET request to MediaWiki's index.php file. There are also some activities that fall under the same conceptual category of actions that I have included in this chapter that rely on Special Pages to implement, such as importing and exporting pages. While technically not actions, these topics fit best in the context of this chapter, which is why they are discussed here.

Before we get to the actions themselves, there is some background information to review. First, you will get a very brief overview of some aspects of the HTTP protocol that you should know in order to help you understand the semantics of actions. This is followed by a more detailed look at how pages are implemented in MediaWiki, including a look at the ...