Help:Magic words

See also: Help:Magic words for beginners

Magic words (which include parser functions, variables and behavior switches) are features of wiki markup that enable various instructions to be given to the MediaWiki software. For example, the magic words may be used to suppress or position the table of contents, or to produce other variable outputs, as is often required in templates.

A quick reference for magic words can be found on this page. For more complete documentation, see the following pages on the MediaWiki site:

• mw:Help:Magic words for all standard magic words, including the "standard" parser functions
• mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions for some additional parser functions, including conditional expressions

General information

There are three types of magic words:

1. Behavior switches: uppercase words surrounded by double underscores, e.g., __NOTOC__ or other keywords using parser function syntax
2. Variables: uppercase words surrounded by double braces (thus resembling templates), e.g. {{PAGENAME}}
3. Parser functions: keywords in double braces with parameters after a colon (some beginning with #), e.g. {{#expr:2+2}}

Some magic words are case-insensitive, but not all. White space is stripped from the start and end of keywords and parameters, as in template syntax.

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.

It is possible to substitute parser functions and most variables in the same way that templates are substituted (using the subst: keyword). This causes their current value (as evaluated at the time of substitution) to be written into the wikitext.

Behavior switches

For documentation, see the Behavior switches section of the MediaWiki page, unless otherwise stated.

Code	Notes
__TOC__	Places the page's table of contents (TOC) at the word's position.
__FORCETOC__	Forces the TOC to appear in its default position immediately before the page's first section (first heading). Can be used anywhere on a page.
__NOTOC__	Suppresses the appearance of the page's TOC. Can be used anywhere on a page.
__NOEDITSECTION__	Hides the "edit" links normally beside all headings on the page. To hide the edit link beside a particular heading, specify the heading using e.g. an HTML tag such as <h2>[Heading]</h2> rather than with the usual wiki equals-signs syntax (e.g. == [Heading] ==).
__NEWSECTIONLINK__	On non-talk pages, adds a "Add topic" link as a means to add a new section to the page.
__NONEWSECTIONLINK__	Removes the "Add topic" link (the add-new-section link) on talk pages.
__NOGALLERY__	Replaces thumbnails on a category page with normal links.
__HIDDENCAT__	Makes a category hidden when included on that category's page.
__INDEX__	Instructs search engines to index the page.
__NOINDEX__	Instructs search engines not to index the page. See Wikipedia:Controlling search engine indexing.
__STATICREDIRECT__	Prevents the link on a redirection page from being updated automatically when the page to which it redirects is moved (and "Update any redirects that point to the original title" is selected). Also instructs interwiki bots to treat the page as if an article.
__DISAMBIG__	Marks a page as a disambiguation page, adds it to Special:DisambiguationPages and places inward links in Special:DisambiguationPageLinks. (See mw:Extension:Disambiguator.)
{{DEFAULTSORT:sortkey}}	Sets the default sort key (the index) under which the page is categorised.

Variables

For more documentation, see this Wikipedia page.

The example outputs in the following table are those that would be produced on the page "Help:Magic words/subpage".

Variable	Example output	Notes
{{PAGENAME}}	Magic words/subpage	Current page's name excluding namespace.
{{NAMESPACE}}	Help	Current page's namespace.
{{NAMESPACENUMBER}}	12	The namespace number of the current page.
{{FULLPAGENAME}}	Help:Magic words/subpage	Current page's name including namespace (i.e. FULLPAGENAME = NAMESPACE:PAGENAME).
{{BASEPAGENAME}}	Magic words/subpage	Current page's name excluding namespace and any subpage element or elements (i.e. the first forward-slash ("/") and anything following; in effect, a subpage's parent's name less its namespace).
{{SUBPAGENAME}}	Magic words/subpage	Returns either the subpage part of the page's name – i.e. whatever follows the last forward-slash ("/") in the page's name – or, if the page is not a subpage (i.e. its name contains no forward-slashes), {{BASEPAGENAME}} (PAGENAME = BASEPAGENAME/SUBPAGENAME).
{{ARTICLEPAGENAME}} {{SUBJECTPAGENAME}}	Help:Magic words/subpage Help:Magic words/subpage	Current page's associated non-talk page.
{{ARTICLESPACE}} {{SUBJECTSPACE}}	Help Help	Current page's associated non-talk namespace.
{{TALKPAGENAME}}	Help talk:Magic words/subpage	Name of talk page associated with current page.
{{TALKSPACE}}	Help talk	Associated talk page's namespace.
{{FULLPAGENAMEE}}, {{PAGENAMEE}},    (etc.)	Help:Magic_words/subpage, Magic_words/subpage, (etc.)	Adding an E to the end of the above variables, renders the above encoded for use in MediaWiki URLs (i.e. with underscores replacing spaces).

Note: The magic words above can also take a parameter, in order to parse values on a page other than the current page. A colon (:) is used to pass the parameter, rather than a pipe (|) that is used in templates, like {{MAGICWORD:value}}. For example, {{TALKPAGENAME:Wikipedia:MOS}} returns Wikipedia talk:MOS on any page. See meta:Help:Page name for more details of parser functions.

Code	Example	Notes
{{SITENAME}}	Gunsopedia
{{SERVER}}	http://www.gunsopedia.com
{{SERVERNAME}}	www.gunsopedia.com
{{CURRENTVERSION}}	1.20.0	Returns current MediaWiki version.

Other variables by type

Date and time	Revision data	Statistics
Universal time {{CURRENTYEAR}} {{CURRENTMONTH}} {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTMONTHABBREV}} {{CURRENTDAY}} {{CURRENTDAY2}} {{CURRENTDOW}} {{CURRENTDAYNAME}} {{CURRENTTIME}} {{CURRENTHOUR}} {{CURRENTWEEK}} {{CURRENTTIMESTAMP}} Local website time {{LOCALYEAR}} {{LOCALMONTH}} {{LOCALMONTHNAME}} {{LOCALMONTHABBREV}} {{LOCALDAY}} {{LOCALDAY2}} {{LOCALDOW}} {{LOCALDAYNAME}} {{LOCALTIME}} {{LOCALHOUR}} {{LOCALWEEK}} {{LOCALTIMESTAMP}}	{{REVISIONID}}a {{REVISIONDAY}} {{REVISIONDAY2}} {{REVISIONMONTH}} {{REVISIONYEAR}} {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} {{REVISIONUSER}}	{{NUMBEROFPAGES}} {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} {{NUMBEROFFILES}} {{NUMBEROFEDITS}} {{NUMBEROFVIEWS}} {{NUMBEROFUSERS}} {{NUMBEROFADMINS}} {{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}}

^a {{REVISIONID}} cannot be substituted and does not function in preview.

Parser functions

For documentation, see the MediaWiki magic words page or the ParserFunctions Extension page, unless otherwise stated.

Metadata

Code	Notes
{{PAGEID}}	Unique page identifier number.
{{PAGESIZE:pagename}}	Size of page named pagename in bytes.
{{PROTECTIONLEVEL:action|pagename}}	Protection level assigned to action ("edit", "move", etc) on page named pagename.
{{PENDINGCHANGELEVEL}}	Protection level for pending changes on the current page.
{{PAGESINCATEGORY:categoryname}}	Number of pages in the category named categoryname.
{{NUMBERINGROUP:groupname}}	Number of users in the usergroup named groupname.

To output numbers without comma separators (for example, as "123456789" rather than "123,456,789"), append the parameter |R.

Formatting

Code	Notes
{{lc:string}}	Converts all characters in string to lower case.
{{lcfirst:string}}	Converts first character of string to lower case.
{{uc:string}}	Converts all characters in string to upper case.
{{ucfirst:string}}	Converts first character of string to upper case.
{{formatnum:unformatted_number}}	Adds comma separators to an unformatted_number (e.g. 123456789 becomes 123,456,789). To remove such formatting, use {{formatnum:formatted_number|R}} (i.e. {{formatnum:7,654,321|R}}, for example, produces 7654321).
{{#formatdate:date|format}}	Formats a date according to user preferences; a default can be given as an optional case-sensitive second parameter for users without date preference; can convert a date from an existing format to any of dmy, mdy, ymd or ISO 8601 formats, with the user's preference overriding the specified format.
{{padleft:xyz|stringlength}} {{padright:xyz|stringlength}}	Pad with zeros to the right or left; an alternative padding string can be given as a third parameter; the alternative padding string may be truncated if its length does not evenly divide the required number of characters.
{{plural:N |singular |plural}}	Outputs singular if N is equal to 1, otherwise outputs plural. See the documentation at mediawiki.org for more details.
{{#time:format|object}} {{#timel:}} (for local time)	Used to format dates and times. #timel is based on local time as defined for the entire wiki; for the English Wikipedia, where local time is set to UTC, this is identical to #time. (See mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions##time.)
{{gender:user |m_out |f_out |u_out}}	Outputs m_out, f_out or u_out according to whether the gender specified in user's preferences is, respectively, male, female or unspecified. Other parameter permutations are available, see mw:Help:Magic words#gender.
{{#tag:tag|content |p1=v1 |p2=v2}}	An equivalent to the HTML <tag>...</tag><code> that is useful when e.g. nesting references.

Paths

Code	Notes
<code> {{localurl:pagename |query}}	Relative path to pagename. The query parameter is optional.
{{fullurl:pagename |query}}	Absolute path, without protocol prefix (i.e. without " " etc), to pagename. The query parameter is optional.
{{canonicalurl:pagename |query}}	Absolute path, including protocol prefix, to pagename. The query parameter is optional.
{{filepath:filename}}	Absolute path to the media file filename.
{{urlencode:string}}	Encodes string for use in URL query strings; {{urlencode:test string}}, for example, produces: test+string. To encode string for use in URL paths or MediaWiki page names, append, respectively, |PATH or |WIKI (to produce "test%20string" or "test_string").
{{anchorencode:string}}	Input encoded for use in MediaWiki URL section anchors.
{{ns:n}}	Returns the name of the namespace whose index is the number n. For MediaWiki URLs, use {{nse:}}.
{{#rel2abs:path}}	Converts a relative file path to an absolute path. (See mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions##rel2abs.)
{{#titleparts:pgname|num|first_seg}}	Splits the page pgname 's title into a number of segments. (See mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions##titleparts.)

Conditional

Some parameters are optional. For documentation, see mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions. For #switch specifically, see Wikipedia:Help:Switch parser function.

Code	Notes
{{#expr:expression}}	Evaluates expression (see m:Help:Calculation).
{{#if:string |result1 |result2}}	Outputs result2 if string is empty, otherwise outputs result1.
{{#ifeq:string1|string2 |result1 |result2}}	Outputs result1 if string1 and string2 are equal (alphabetically or numerically), otherwise outputs result2.
{{#iferror:test_string |result1 |result2}}	Outputs result1 if test_string generates a parsing error, otherwise outputs result2.
{{#ifexpr:expression |result1 |result2}}	Outputs result1 if expression  is true, otherwise outputs result2.
{{#ifexist:pagetitle |result1 |result2}}	Outputs result1 if the page [[pagetitle]] exists, otherwise outputs result2. Note that underscores are needed for spaces in namespaces.
{{#switch:string |c1=r1 |c2=r2 ... |default}}	Outputs r1 if string is c1, r2 if string is c2, etc, otherwise outputs default (if provided).

If, in these conditional functions, empty unnamed parameters are to be parsed as empty rather than as text (i.e. as empty rather than as the text "{{{1}}}", "{{{2}}}", etc.), they will require trailing pipes (i.e. {{{1|}}}, {{{2|}}}, etc., rather than {{{1}}}, {{{2}}}, etc.).

• For the use of these functions in tables, see Wikipedia:Conditional tables.
• For examples and further explanations, see Wikipedia:Help:Conditional expressions and Wikipedia:Help:Switch parser function.

See also

• mw:Localisation
• mw:Manual:Extending wiki markup
• CoreParserFunctions.php
• wikEd, a MediaWiki editor with syntax highlighting for templates and parser functions