refbase extension for MediaWiki
===============================
Authors
-------
Richard Karnesky <karnesky@gmail.com>
Thibault Marin <thibault.marin at gmx dot com>
About
-----
This is an extension to MediaWiki:
<https://www.mediawiki.org/>
It allows you to cite references by enclosing the serial or the citation key
in tags such as:
<refbase>17</refbase> or <refbase>Author2000</refbase>
To install the extension, download and extract the files in a directory called
Refbase in your mediawiki extensions/ folder. Add the following code at the
bottom of your LocalSettings.php:
require_once( "$IP/extensions/Refbase/Refbase.php" );
To verify that the extension is successfully installed, go to the
"Special:Version" page on your wiki, you should see the Refbase extension in
the list of parser hook extensions.
To configure the extension, add the following lines (modified to match your
setup) after the 'require_once' line in your LocalSettings.php (omitted fields
take the default value indicated here):
$wgRefbaseDbHost = "localhost"; // refbase database host
$wgRefbaseDbName = "literature"; // Database name
$wgRefbaseDbUser = "litwww"; // User name for database
$wgRefbaseDbPass = "%l1t3ratur3?"; // Database password
$wgRefbaseDbCharset = "utf8"; // Database charset
$wgRefbaseDbRefTable = "refs"; // Table with references
$wgRefbaseDbUserDataTable = "user_data"; // Table with cite_key field
$wgRefbaseDbAccessMethod = "mysql"; // Database access mode
// 'mysql' or 'PDO'
// Host for refbase instance (used for url links). This may differ from the
// database host (requires a trailing slash)
$wgRefbaseURL = "http://".$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']."/refbase/";
// HTTP (basic) authentication mode when accessing refbase instance (only
// used with 'cite' and 'link' output types, when using a 'rb-*' citation
// type), see below for details.
$wgRefbaseURLAuth = ''; // '', 'default' or 'user:pass'
A few options can also be set (see below for description):
// Tag type
$wgRefbaseDefaultTagType = 'serial'; // 'serial' or 'citekey'
// Output type
$wgRefbaseDefaultOutputType = 'cite_journal'; // 'cite_journal', 'cite'
// or 'link'
// Citation type
$wgRefbaseDefaultCitationType = 'minimal'; // 'minimal' or 'rb-*'
Options
-------
0. Scope
All options are set globally (by the $wgRefbaseDefault* variables) for the
whole wiki. Most can also be modified for individual instances of the
<refbase> tag by passing extra arguments to the tag, e.g. <refbase
tagtype='citekey' output='cite'>XXX</refbase>.
1. Tag type
Possible values: 'serial', 'citekey'
Global setting
$wgRefbaseDefaultTagType = 'serial';
Individual setting
<refbase tagtype='serial'>XXX</refbase>
This option controls the interpretation of the tag input: when using the
refbase tag in wikipages, e.g. <refbase>XXX</refbase>, the input key (XXX)
can refer to the serial number ('serial' type) or the citation key
('citekey' type). Note that if no entry is found using the selected tag
type, a second search is performed with the other tag type.
2. Output type
Possible values: 'cite_journal', 'cite', 'link'
Global setting
$wgRefbaseDefaultOutputType = 'cite_journal';
Individual setting
<refbase output='cite_journal'>XXX</refbase>
This option determines the way citations are rendered in the wikipage. There
are several modes:
.'cite_journal': This is the default mode, used in version 0.9 of the
extension. The output will use citation templates, as are used on
Wikipedia:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_templates>
Currently, only journal articles may be cited with this output type. In
the future, this extension is likely to be modified. 'refbase' should
be able to generate WP citation templates as an export format & this
extension should make use of that functionality directly.
.'cite': This mode uses the Cite extension
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Cite>
A footnote is generated for each citation using the <ref> tag. Multiple
references to the same entry are automatically combined using the <ref
name=YYY> option. To see the list of references a <references/> tag
must be added to the wikipage where the bibliography should be
displayed. See the Cite extension documentation for details. The
footnote text is a citation following the 'citation type' option (see
below).
.'link': This is a simple renderer which does not require any installed
template/extension. It simply writes the tag input (serial or citation
key) to the wikipage, adding a tooltip and a hyperlink to the refbase
entry. The tooltip contains the citation text (controlled by the
citation type variable) and the hyperlink links to the refbase page (the
base refbase installation location is given by the $wgRefbaseURL
variable).
3. Citation type
Possible values: 'minimal, 'rb-default', 'rb-MLA', 'rb-APA', etc.
Global setting
$wgRefbaseDefaultCitationType = 'minimal';
Individual setting
<refbase citationtype='minimal'>XXX</refbase>
This option determines how citations are rendered in the 'cite' and 'link'
output modes (it has no effect when using the 'cite_journal' output type).
The two possible modes are:
.'minimal': This generates a simple citation with the authors, title,
publication and year.
.'rb-*': This requests the citation text from the refbase web interface.
The * in 'rb-*' can be 'default' (i.e. 'rb-default') or any acceptable
citation style (defined in the 'styles' database).
4. Database connection mode
Possible values: 'mysql', 'PDO'
Global setting
$wgRefbaseDbAccessMethod = 'mysql';
Individual setting
This option can only be set at the global level.
This option selects the way the extension connects to the mysql database.
The 'mysql' mode is getting deprecated in recent versions of php, but is
still available for older installations.
5. HTTP authentication for requests to refbase instance
Possible values: '', 'default' or 'user:pass'
Global setting
$wgRefbaseURLAuth = '';
Individual setting
This option can only be set at the global level.
This option is used to pass an HTTP authentication token to the server
hosting the refbase installation (basic authentication e.g. from apache
server). If $wgRefbaseURLAuth is empty (''), no authentication is passed.
If set to 'default', the current user/password token will be passed when
requesting data from the refbase web interface (this is useful when both
mediawiki and refbase are under the same basic server authentication). To
specify an arbitrary user and password, set $wgRefbaseURLAuth to 'user:pass'
where 'user' is the username and 'pass' the password for that user (note
that the username cannot contain colon characters ':'). This option is
relevant only when using the 'cite' or 'link' output types along with one of
the 'rb-*' citation type.
Notes
-----
You may also be interested in the MonoBook skin, included in the
'contrib/skins/mediawiki-monobook' directory from refbase.
An installation of MediaWiki that uses this extension is the Northwestern
University Center for Atom-Probe Tomography:
<http://arc.nucapt.northwestern.edu/#Literature>
