Help:Magic words
Magic words are strings of text that MediaWiki associates with a return value or function, such as time, site details, or page names. This page is about usage of standard magic words; for a technical reference, see [Manual:Magic words] .
There are three general types of magic words:
- Behavior switches: these are uppercase words surrounded by double underscores (eg __FOO__)
- Variables: these are uppercase words surrounded by double braces (eg <tt>{{FOO}}</tt>). As such, they look a lot like templates
- Parser functions: these take parameters and are either of the form <tt>{{foo:...}}</tt> or <tt>{{#foo:...}}</tt>.
Page-dependent magic words will affect or return data about the current page, even if the word is added through a transcluded template or included system message.
Contents |
Behaviour switches
A behaviour switch controls the layout or behaviour of the page and can often be used to specify desired omissions and inclusions in the content.
Word | Description | Versions |
---|---|---|
Table of contents | ||
__NOTOC__ | Hides the table of contents (TOC). | |
__FORCETOC__ | Forces the table of content to appear at its normal position (above the first header). | |
__TOC__ | Places a table of contents at the word's current position (overriding __NOTOC__). If this is used multiple times, the table of contents will appear at the first word's position. | |
Editing | ||
__NOEDITSECTION__ | Hides the section edit links beside headings. | |
Categories | ||
Language conversion | ||
__NOCONTENTCONVERT__ __NOCC__ |
On wikis with language variants, don't perform any content language conversion (character and phase) in article display; for example, only show Chinese (zh) instead of variants like zh_cn, zh_tw, zh_sg, or zh_hk. | |
__NOTITLECONVERT__ __NOTC__ |
On wikis with language variants, don't perform language conversion on the title (all other content is converted). | |
Other | ||
__START__ | No effect. | |
__END__ | Explicitly marks the end of the article, to prevent MediaWiki from removing trailing whitespace. Removed in [rev:19213]
. |
Variables
Variables return information about the current page, wiki, or date. Their syntax is similar to templates. If a template name conflicts with a variable, the variable will be used (so to transclude the template Template:PAGENAME you would need to write {{Template:PAGENAME}}
). In some cases, adding parameters will force the parser to treat a variable as a template; for example, {{CURRENTDAYNAME|x}}
transcludes Template:CURRENTDAYNAME.
Date & time
The following variables return the current date and time according to the user's timezone preferences, defaulting to the UTC timezone.
Due to MediaWiki and browser caching, these variables frequently show when the page was cached rather than the current time.
Variable | Output | Description | Versions |
---|---|---|---|
Year | |||
{{CURRENTYEAR}} | 2024 | Year | |
Month | |||
{{CURRENTMONTH}} | 12 | Month (zero-padded number) | |
{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} | December | Month (name) | |
{{CURRENTMONTHNAMEGEN}} | December | Month (genitive form) | |
{{CURRENTMONTHABBREV}} | Dec | Month (abbreviation) | 1.5+ |
Day | |||
{{CURRENTDAY}} | 23 | Day of the month (unpadded number) | |
{{CURRENTDAY2}} | 23 | Day of the month (zero-padded number) | 1.6+ |
{{CURRENTDOW}} | 1 | Day of the week (unpadded number) | |
{{CURRENTDAYNAME}} | Monday | Day of the week (name) | |
Time | |||
{{CURRENTTIME}} | 02:55 | Time (24-hour HH:mm format) | |
Other | |||
{{CURRENTWEEK}} | 52 | Week (number) |
The following variables do the same as the above, but using the site's local timezone instead of user preferences and UTC:
- {{LOCALYEAR}}
- {{LOCALMONTH}}
- {{LOCALMONTHNAME}}
- {{LOCALMONTHNAMEGEN}}
- {{LOCALMONTHABBREV}}
- {{LOCALDAY}}
- {{LOCALDAY2}}
- {{LOCALDOW}}
- {{LOCALDAYNAME}}
- {{LOCALTIME}}
- {{LOCALWEEK}}
Technical metadata
Revision variables return data about the latest edit to the current page, even if viewing an older version of the page.
Variable | Output | Description | Versions |
---|---|---|---|
Site | |||
{{SITENAME}} | CityDeepSky | The wiki's site name ([Manual:$wgSitename]
). |
|
{{SERVER}} | http://citydeepsky.com | domain URL ([Manual:$wgServer]
) |
|
{{SERVERNAME}} | citydeepsky.com | domain name ([Manual:$wgServerName]
) |
|
{{SCRIPTPATH}} | /wiki | relative script path ([Manual:$wgScriptPath]
) |
|
Latest revision to current page | |||
{{REVISIONID}} | 2507 | Unique ID | 1.5+ |
Statistics
Numbers returned by these variables normally contain separators (commas or spaces, depending on the local language). |- !bgcolor="#A7C1F2" | Variable !bgcolor="#A7C1F2" | Output !bgcolor="#A7C1F2" | Description !bgcolor="#A7C1F2" | Versions |- |bgcolor="#8DA7D6" color="black" colspan="4"| Entire wiki |- | {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} | 256 | Number of pages in main namespace. | |- | {{NUMBEROFFILES}} | 289 | Number of uploaded files. | 1.5+ |}
Page names
Variable | Output | Description | Versions |
---|---|---|---|
{{FULLPAGENAME}} | Help:Magic words | Namespace and page title. | 1.6+ |
{{PAGENAME}} | Magic words | Page title. | |
{{SUBPAGENAME}} | Magic words | The subpage title ("foo" on "Title/foo"). | 1.6+ |
The following are URL-encoded equivalents:
- {{FULLPAGENAMEE}}
- {{PAGENAMEE}}
- {{SUBPAGENAMEE}}
Namespaces
Variable | Output | Description | Versions |
---|---|---|---|
{{NAMESPACE}} | Help | Namespace (name) |
The following are URL-encoded equivalents:
- {{NAMESPACEE}}
Parser functions
Parser functions are very similar to variables, but operate on user input instead of the current page.
This page only describes parser functions that are integral to the MediaWiki software. Other parser functions may be added by MediaWiki extensions such as the [Extension:ParserFunctions] .
URL data
Variable | Output | Description | Versions |
---|---|---|---|
{{localurl:page name}} {{localurl:page name|query string}} |
/wiki/index.php/Page_name /wiki/index.php?title=Page_name&query string |
relative path to title | |
{{fullurl:page name}} {{fullurl:page name|query_string}} |
http://citydeepsky.com/wiki/index.php/Page_name http://citydeepsky.com/wiki/index.php?title=Page_name&query_string |
absolute path to title | 1.5+ |
Namespaces
{{ns:}}
returns the localized name for the namespace with that index.
Usage | Output | Usage | Output |
---|---|---|---|
{{ns:-2}} or {{ns:Media}} | Media | {{ns:-1}} or {{ns:Special}} | Special |
{{ns:0}} | {{ns:1}} or {{ns:Talk}} | Talk | |
{{ns:2}} or {{ns:User}} | User | {{ns:3}} or {{ns:User_talk}} | User talk |
{{ns:4}} or {{ns:Project}} | CityDeepSky | {{ns:5}} or {{ns:Project_talk}} | CityDeepSky talk |
{{ns:6}} or {{ns:File}} or {{ns:Image}} | File | {{ns:7}} or {{ns:File_talk}} or {{ns:Image_talk}} | File talk |
{{ns:8}} or {{ns:MediaWiki}} | MediaWiki | {{ns:9}} or {{ns:MediaWiki_talk}} | MediaWiki talk |
{{ns:10}} or {{ns:Template}} | Template | {{ns:11}} or {{ns:Template_talk}} | Template talk |
{{ns:12}} or {{ns:Help}} | Help | {{ns:13}} or {{ns:Help_talk}} | Help talk |
{{ns:14}} or {{ns:Category}} | Category | {{ns:15}} or {{ns:Category_talk}} | Category talk |
Formatting
Usage | Output | Description | Version |
---|---|---|---|
{{lc:string}} | xyz | The lowercase input. | 1.5+ |
{{lcfirst:string}} | xYZ | The input with the first character lowercase. | 1.5+ |
{{uc:string}} | XYZ | The uppercase input. | 1.5+ |
{{ucfirst:string}} | Xyz | The input with the first character uppercase. | 1.5+ |
{{plural:2|is|are}} | are | Outputs the correct given pluralization form (parameters except first) depending on the count (first parameter). Plural transformations are used for languages like Russian based on "count mod 10". |