Help:Magic words

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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.

General notes[edit]

  • Inheritance: page-dependent magic words will affect or return data about the current page, regardless of whether it is in the page code or a transcluded template.

Behaviour switches[edit]

A behaviour switch controls the layout of the page. They are written as a magic word wrapped with double underscores.

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.
__NEWSECTIONLINK__ Adds a link (("+" by default) beside the "edit" tab for adding a new section on a non-talk page (see m:Help:Section#Adding a section at the end). 1.7+
Categories
__NOGALLERY__ Used on a category page, replaces thumbnails in the category view with normal links. 1.7+
__HIDDENCAT__ Used on a category page, hides the category from the lists of categories in its members and parent categories (there is an option in the user preferences to show them). 1.13+
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
__END__ Explicitly marks the end of the article, to prevent MediaWiki from removing trailing whitespace. Removed in 19213.
__START__ No effect.

Variables[edit]

The syntax of variables is similar to templates, but capitalized to help avoid conflicts. If a template has the same name and case as a variable, the variable will be used. Usage of the template can be forced by adding the "msg:" modifier (for example, "{{msg:CURRENTYEAR}}"). In some cases, adding parameters will force the parser to treat a variable as a template; for example, {{CURRENTDAYNAME|x}} tries to transclude "Template:CURRENTDAYNAME".

Date & time[edit]

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}} 03 Month (zero-padded number)
{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} March Month (name)
{{CURRENTMONTHNAMEGEN}} March Month (genitive form)
{{CURRENTMONTHABBREV}} Mar Month (abbreviation) 1.5+
Day
{{CURRENTDAY}} 19 Day of the month (unpadded number)
{{CURRENTDAY2}} 19 Day of the month (zero-padded number) 1.6+
{{CURRENTDOW}} 2 Day of the week (unpadded number)
{{CURRENTDAYNAME}} Tuesday Day of the week (name)
Time
{{CURRENTTIME}} 03:24 Time (24-hour HH:mm format)
{{CURRENTHOUR}} 03 Hour (24-hour zero-padded number)
Other
{{CURRENTWEEK}} 12 Week (number)
{{CURRENTTIMESTAMP}} 20240319032408 ISO 8601 time stamp 1.7+

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}}
  • {{LOCALHOUR}}
  • {{LOCALWEEK}}
  • {{LOCALTIMESTAMP}}

Technical metadata[edit]

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}} BRL-CAD The wiki's site name (Template:Mediawiki).
{{CURRENTVERSION}} 1.32.2 The wiki's MediaWiki version. 1.7+
{{CONTENTLANGUAGE}} en The wiki's default interface language (Template:Mediawiki)
Latest revision to current page
{{REVISIONID}} 331 Unique ID
{{REVISIONDAY}} 24 Day edit was made (unpadded number)
{{REVISIONDAY2}} 24 Day edit was made (zero-padded number)
{{REVISIONMONTH}} 04 Month edit was made (unpadded number)
{{REVISIONYEAR}} 2008 Year edit was made
{{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} 20080424221511 Timestamp as of time of edit

Statistics[edit]

Numbers returned by these variables contain number separators, but can return raw numbers with the ":R" flag (for example, {{NUMBEROFPAGES}} = 1,826 and {{NUMBEROFPAGES:R}} = 1826). Use "|R" for magic words that require a parameter like PAGESINCATEGORY (for example {{PAGESINCATEGORY:Help}} and {{PAGESINCATEGORY:Help|R}}).

Variable Output Description Versions
Entire wiki
{{NUMBEROFPAGES}} 1,826 Number of wiki pages. 1.7+
{{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} 310 Number of pages in main namespace.
{{NUMBEROFFILES}} 605 Number of uploaded files. 1.5+
{{NUMBEROFEDITS}} 12,613 Number of page edits. 1.10+
{{NUMBEROFUSERS}} 1,205 Number of registered users. 1.7+
{{NUMBEROFADMINS}} 10 Number of users in in the sysop group. 1.7+
Per namespace
{{PAGESINNS:2}} Template:PAGESINNS:0 Number of pages in the given namespace (replace 2 with the relevant namespace ID). Disabled by default, enable with Template:Mediawiki. 1.7+
{{PAGESINNAMESPACE:2}} Template:PAGESINNAMESPACE:2 Alias for {{PAGESINNS}}. 1.7+
Other
{{PAGESINCATEGORY:Help}} 36 Number of pages in the given category (replace "Help" with the relevant category name). 1.13+
{{PAGESINCAT:Help}} 36 Alias for {{PAGESINCATEGORY}}. 1.13+
{{PAGESIZE:Help:Magic_words}} 13,281 Returns the byte size of the specified page. 1.13+

URL data[edit]

URLs[edit]

Variable Output Description Versions
{{SERVER}} https://brlcad.org domain URL (Template:Mediawiki)
{{SERVERNAME}} brlcad.org domain name (Template:Mediawiki)
{{SCRIPTPATH}} /w relative script path (Template:Mediawiki)
{{localurl:page name}}
{{localurl:page name|query string}}
/wiki/Page_name
/w/index.php?title=Page_name&query string
relative path to title
{{fullurl:page name}}
{{fullurl:page name|query_string}}
https://brlcad.org/wiki/Page_name
https://brlcad.org/w/index.php?title=Page_name&query_string
absolute path to title
{{filepath:file name}}
{{filepath:file name|nowiki}}
Wiki.png
https://brlcad.org/w/images/b/bc/Wiki.png
absolute path to image or media file (nowiki parameter currenty buggy) r25854

Page names[edit]

Variable Output Description Versions
{{FULLPAGENAME}} Help:Magic words Namespace and page title.
{{PAGENAME}} Magic words Page title.
{{BASEPAGENAME}} Magic words Page title excluding the current subpage and namespace ("Title" on "Title/foo"). 1.7+
{{SUBPAGENAME}} Magic words The subpage title ("foo" on "Title/foo"). 1.6+
{{SUBJECTPAGENAME}} Help:Magic words The namespace and title of the associated content page. 1.7+
{{TALKPAGENAME}} Help talk:Magic words The namespace and title of the associated talk page. 1.7+

The following are URL-encoded equivalents:

  • {{FULLPAGENAMEE}}
  • {{PAGENAMEE}}
  • {{BASEPAGENAMEE}}
  • {{SUBPAGENAMEE}}
  • {{SUBJECTPAGENAMEE}}
  • {{TALKPAGENAMEE}}

Namespaces[edit]

Variable Output Description Versions
{{NAMESPACE}} Help Namespace (name)
{{SUBJECTSPACE}} Help Name of the associated content namespace
{{TALKSPACE}} Help talk Name of the associated talk namespace

The following are URL-encoded equivalents:

  • {{NAMESPACEE}}
  • {{SUBJECTSPACEE}}
  • {{TALKSPACEE}}

{{ns:}} returns the localized namespace name for that number of constant. The default values are:

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}} BRL-CAD
{{ns:5}} or {{ns:Project_talk}} BRL-CAD talk
{{ns:6}} or {{ns:Image}} File
{{ns:7}} 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