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Extension:Echo

Issue tracker: #Notifications
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This extension comes with MediaWiki 1.40 and above. Thus you do not have to download it again. However, you still need to follow the other instructions provided.
MediaWiki extensions manual
Notifications
Release status: stable
Implementation Notify
Description Provides an in-wiki notification system that can be used by other extensions.
Author(s)
Latest version continuous updates
Compatibility policy Snapshots releases along with MediaWiki. Master is not backward compatible.
MediaWiki >= 1.43
Database changes Yes
Tables echo_email_batch
echo_event
echo_notification
echo_subscription
echo_target_page
echo_push_provider
echo_push_subscription
echo_push_topic
echo_unread_wikis
License MIT License
Download
Download extension
Git [?]:
Help Help:Extension:Echo
Parameters
  • $wgEchoNotificationCategories
  • $wgEchoMaxMentionsCount
  • $wgEchoPerUserWhitelistFormat
  • $wgEchoPushMaxSubscriptionsPerUser
  • $wgEchoMentionOnChanges
  • $wgEchoPollForUpdates
  • $wgEchoUseJobQueue
  • $wgEchoBundleEmailInterval
  • $wgEchoEnableApiEvents
  • $wgEchoMentionsOnMultipleSectionEdits
  • $wgDefaultNotifyTypeAvailability
  • $wgEchoSecondaryIcons
  • $wgEchoCacheVersion
  • $wgEchoMaxUpdateCount
  • $wgEchoNotifiers
  • $wgEchoAgentBlacklist
  • $wgEchoSharedTrackingCluster
  • $wgEchoEnablePush
  • $wgEchoPerUserBlacklist
  • $wgEchoEnableEmailBatch
  • $wgEchoWatchlistNotifications
  • $wgNotifyTypeAvailabilityByCategory
  • $wgEchoMaxMentionsInEditSummary
  • $wgEchoNotifications
  • $wgEchoCluster
  • $wgEchoPushServiceBaseUrl
  • $wgEchoWatchlistEmailOncePerPage
  • $wgAllowArticleReminderNotification
  • $wgEchoNotificationIcons
  • $wgEchoSharedTrackingDB
  • $wgEchoOnWikiBlacklist
  • $wgEchoSeenTimeCacheType
  • $wgEchoMentionStatusNotifications
  • $wgEchoCrossWikiNotifications
  • $wgEchoEmailFooterAddress
Added rights
  • manage-all-push-subscriptions
  • echo-create
Hooks used
Hooks provided
Quarterly downloads 129 (Ranked 43rd)
Public wikis using 2,698 (Ranked 187th)
Translate the Echo extension if it is available at translatewiki.net
Issues Open tasks · Report a bug

The Notifications extension, historically called Echo in code and documentation for sysadmins and developers, provides an in-wiki notification system that provides the user with alerts and notices about activity on the wiki, such as another user mentioning them on a talk page, or an edit of theirs being reverted. Other MediaWiki extensions can make use of Notifications to send their own notifications; Thanks and DiscussionTools are two such extensions.

Installation

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  • The database user must have been granted the "REFERENCES" right for the database. How you check this depends on how you set up the database in the first place. For example, if you used a control panel application, then that interface should provide a way to check and change the privileges of the database user ($wgDBuser in LocalSettings.php ).
  • Download and move the extracted Echo folder to your extensions/ directory.
    Developers and code contributors should install the extension from Git instead, using:cd extensions/
    git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/mediawiki/extensions/Echo
  • Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php file: 
    wfLoadExtension( 'Echo' );
  • Run the update script which will automatically create the necessary database tables that this extension needs.
  • If necessary configure at your convenience
  • Yes Done – Navigate to Special:Version on your wiki to verify that the extension is successfully installed.

To allow daily or weekly summary notifications to be delivered by mail (for users that choose that in preferences), the following script inside the Echo extension directory needs to be run on a daily basis, which can be scheduled in a cron job: 

maintenance/processEchoEmailBatch.php

Configuration

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It is possible to use conditional user options to set different notification preferences for new users, without affecting existing users.

See Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration for local details.

Parameters

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Configuration settings (defaults defined in extension.json)
Parameter Default Comment
$wgEchoEnableEmailBatch true Whether to turn on email batch function
$wgEchoUseJobQueue false
  • true - Defer web and email notification delivery via job queue.
  • false - Deliver notifications immediately
$wgEchoEmailFooterAddress '' The organization address (or whatever text you want to appear in the footer of the email notifications). Should be defined in LocalSettings.php
$wgNotificationSender $wgPasswordSender The email address for both "from" and "reply to" on email notifications. Should be defined in LocalSettings.php
$wgNotificationSenderName "emailsender" message (MediaWiki) Name for "from" on email notifications. Should be defined in LocalSettings.php
$wgNotificationReplyName No Reply Name for "reply to" on email notifications. Should be defined in LocalSettings.php
$wgEchoCluster false Use the main db if this is set to false, to use a specific external db, just use any key defined in $wgExternalServers
$wgEchoSharedTrackingDB false Shared database to use for keeping track of cross-wiki unread notifications; false to not keep track of it at all
$wgEchoSharedTrackingCluster false Cluster the shared tracking database is located on; false if it is on the main one. Must be a key defined in $wgExternalServers
$wgEchoMaxUpdateCount 2000 The max number of notifications allowed for a user to do a live update, this is also the number of max notifications allowed for a user to have.
$wgEchoMaxMentionsCount 50 The max number of mention notifications allowed for a user to send at once
$wgEchoMentionStatusNotifications false Enable mention success/failure notifications
$wgEchoMentionsOnMultipleSectionEdits true Trigger mentions for multiple-section edits
$wgEchoMentionOnChanges true Trigger mentions for edits to existing comments, as long as a signature is added in the same section
$wgEchoMaxMentionsInEditSummary 0 Maximum number of users that will be notified that they were linked from an edit summary or 0 for no notifications
$wgEchoBundleEmailInterval 0 The time interval between each bundle email in seconds; set a small number for test wikis. This should be set to 0 to disable email bundling if there is no delay queue support
$wgEchoNewMsgAlert true Whether or not to enable a new talk page message alert for logged in users.
$wgNotifyTypeAvailabilityByCategory 
[
	// Otherwise, a user->user email could trigger an additional redundant notification email.
	'emailuser' => [
		'web' => true,
		'email' => false,
	],
	'mention-failure' => [
		'web' => true,
		'email' => false,
	],
	'mention-success' => [
		'web' => true,
		'email' => false,
	],
]
Define which notify types are available for each notification category. If any notify types are omitted, it defaults to $wgDefaultNotifyTypeAvailability.
$wgEchoNotifiers 
[
	'web' => [ 'EchoNotifier', 'notifyWithNotification' ],
	'email' => [ 'EchoNotifier', 'notifyWithEmail' ],
]
Definitions of the different types of notification delivery that are possible. Each definition consists of a class name and a function name. See also EchoNotificationController class.
$wgEchoAgentBlacklist [] List of usernames which will not trigger notifications
$wgEchoOnWikiBlacklist Echo-blacklist Page location of community maintained blacklist within NS_MEDIAWIKI containing one username per line which will not trigger notifications. Set to null to disable.
$wgEchoPerUserWhitelistFormat %s/Echo-whitelist An sprintf format of the location of the per-user notification agent whitelist within the NS_USER namespace. %s will be replaced with the users name. The whitelists must contain one username per line which will always trigger notifications regardless of their existence in the blacklists. Set to null to disable.
$wgEchoCrossWikiNotifications false Whether to enable the cross-wiki notifications feature. To enable this feature you need to:
  • have CentralAuth for a global user system (T243412)
  • have $wgMainStash and $wgMainWANCache shared between wikis
  • configure $wgEchoSharedTrackingDB
$wgEchoUseCrossWikiBetaFeature false Feature flag for the cross-wiki notifications beta feature

If this is true, the cross-wiki notifications preference will appear in the BetaFeatures section. If this is false, it'll appear in the Notifications section instead.

This does not control whether cross-wiki notifications are enabled by default. For that, use $wgDefaultUserOptions['echo-cross-wiki-notifications'] = true;

$wgEchoNotificationCategories See extension.json Define the categories that notifications can belong to. Categories can be assigned the following parameters. All parameters are optional:
  • priority - controls the order in which notifications are displayed in preferences and batch emails. Priority ranges from 1 to 10. If the priority is not specified, it defaults to 10, which is the lowest.
  • no-dismiss - disables the dismissability of notifications in the category. It can either be set to an array of output formats (see $wgEchoNotifiers) or an array containing 'all'.
  • usergroups - specifies an array of usergroups eligible to receive the notifications in the category. If no usergroups parameter is specified, all groups are eligible.

If a notifications type doesn't have a category parameter, it is automatically assigned to the other category which is lowest priority and has no preferences or dismissibility.

$wgEchoNotificationIcons See extension.json Defines icons, which are 30x30 images. This is passed to BeforeCreateEchoEvent so extensions can define their own icons with the same structure. It is recommended that extensions prefix their icon key. An example is myextension-name. This will help avoid namespace conflicts.

You can use either a path or a url, but not both. The value of 'path' is relative to $wgExtensionAssetsPath.

The value of 'url' should be a URL.

You should customize the site icon URL, which is: $wgEchoNotificationIcons['site']['url']

$wgEchoNotifications See extension.json Define the event types for echo. Event definitions are in the form of 'event-name' => [ ... ].
  • category - defines the category the event belongs to. Defaults to 'other'.
  • group - defaults to 'neutral'.
  • bundle - define which output formats are available for bundling.
  • presentation-model - define which class is used to render notification messages and links for notification panels, special page and emails. It must extend EchoEventPresentationModel.
$wgEchoConfig See extension.json Configuration for EventLogging. Individual schemas can be disabled.
$wgEchoPerUserBlacklist null Boolean that enabled Per User Blacklist.


User preferences

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Preference settings (defaults defined in extension.json)
Preference Default Comment
$wgDefaultUserOptions['echo-email-frequency'] 0 How often to send emails, by default:
  • 0 - send emails for each notification as they come in (default)
  • -1 - do not send emails
  • 1 - each day
  • 7 - each 7 days
  • ...
$wgDefaultUserOptions['echo-email-format'] Depends on $wgAllowHTMLEmail Default user preference for whether to use HTML or text email. Either html or plain-text.
$wgDefaultUserOptions["echo-subscriptions-email-{$category}"] false for most categories; depends Default user preference for whether to notify via email for a particular category
$wgDefaultUserOptions["echo-subscriptions-web-{$category}"] true for most categories; depends Default user preference for whether to notify via web for a particular category


Architecture

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See the architecture section of the feature page .

Usage

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Notification negative list / positive list

There are occasionally specific users, typically bots, which perform maintenance tasks that should not generate notifications. To handle these cases, users can be globally blacklisted from the LocalSettings.php file (or InitialiseSettings.php in the case of WMF wikis): 

$wgEchoAgentBlacklist = [ 'SampleBot', 'SampleUser' ];

There is also an on-wiki blacklist that can be maintained by the wiki's community. The location of the global on-wiki blacklist defaults to MediaWiki:Echo-blacklist. Individual users can override the blacklist by creating a whitelist. The whitelist location defaults to Special:MyPage/Echo-whitelist. All on-wiki lists expect to receive one case-specific username per line with no special markup or prefixes. For example: 

SampleBot
SampleUser
"Mention" option

One of the notification types that this extension allows is: "Notify me when someone links to my user page." It might not be obvious to some users, but this particular notification only works when the person linking to another user's page also signs (~~~~) the post.

After installation of the extension, a new tab "Notifications" is created in a user's Special:Preferences page. Under the section "Notify me about these events", in front of the "Mention" option, the hoverbox states: "Notify me when someone links to my user page." If an administrator feels, that the requirement for signing the post isn't obvious in this help text, it can be modified by changing the text in the Wiki's MediaWiki:Echo-pref-tooltip-mention page.

Terminology

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  • notification - Any individual notice that is delivered by Echo
  • message - A notification about activity in a Flow discussion
  • alert - Any notification other than a message

See also

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