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DynamicPageList (DPL)

DPL is a MediaWiki extension which creates lists of articles that match certain criteria. Articles are listed by name; meta data like popularity or last access date can be added. And there are powerful mechanisms to extract content from the articles and show it as part of the list.

In short DPL aims to be a universal report generator for MediaWiki.

Assume you have written some articles about countries. Typically these articles will have three things in common:

• All articles will belong to a common category
• They will have a similar chapter structure, i.e. they will contain sections named 'Religion' or 'History'
• They will use a template which is used to present highly structured short data items ('Capital', 'Inhabitants', ..) in a nice way (e.g. as a wikitable)

With DPL you can

• generate a list of all those articles
• show metadata of the articles
• show one or more chapters of the articles
• show parameter values which are passed to the common template

Find the articles you want to list:

• select by a logical combination (AND,OR,NOT) of categories
• select by a logical combination (AND,OR,NOT) of namespaces
• define a pattern which must match their name
• name a page to which the articles must or must not refer
• exclude or include redirections

Order the articles descending or ascending according to

• name
• date of last change
• popularity
• user who changed them last
• ...

Define attributes you want to see

• article name
• article namespace
• date of last change
• date of last access
• user who changed them last

Define contents you want to show

• chapter contents (identified by headings)
• text portions (defined by special marker tags)
• values of template calls

Define the output format

• headlines
• ordered list, unordered list
• table
• category style listing
• truncate title or contents to maximum length
• add a link to the article or certain chapters

In big wikis it is useful to automatically generate lists of articles (pages) which have something in common. The classic approach of MediaWiki to this is a system of categories. Although it is possible to assign an article to several categories the normal way to find an article (aprat from full text search or direct links to the article) is a list of articles which belong to one category.

• DPL allows to list articles by a logical expression on their catgeories (AND, OR, NOT)

Another way to find an article is the "What links here" button.

• DPL allows to list articles which do link or do not link to a certain other article.

groups you to list articles which belong to more than one category or to one of several categories

Subcategories have been added and hierarchical The only kind of list you can get It is easy to get lost in a wiki. It is easy to create structures which are similar bit not identical

<javascript src="sorttable"/>

Country	Official Name	Capital	Dial Code	History	Religion
DPL Example 007 main page 1 (%COUNT%)
Nigunda (%COUNT%) Republic of Nigunda Capital Bamitogoo phone prefix 237 see the country list ..	some facts about religious groups in Nigunda; some other facts about religious groups in Nigunda;
Nigunda Test (%COUNT%) Republic of Nigunda Test Capital Bamitogoo Test phone prefix 237 see the country list ..	Nigunda Test History - Chapter Sequence in the article doesn´t matter for DPL .. some facts about religious groups in Nigunda; some other facts about religious groups in Nigunda Test;
Somango (%COUNT%) Somango Island Capital Aaaabququque phone prefix 224 see the country list ..	a text on the history of Somango; a text on the history of Somango; a text on the history of Somango; some facts about religion in Somango