Extension:ExternalRedirect

MediaWiki extensions manual

ExternalRedirect Release status: stable
Implementation	Parser function
Description	Allows to make redirects to external websites
Author(s)	Dāvis Mošenkovs (DavisNTtalk)
Latest version	1.2.1 (2022-02-21)
MediaWiki	1.27+
Database changes	No
License	GNU General Public License 2.0 or later
Download	GitHub: project page git repository URL [help ] commit history Note: No localisation updates are provided by translatewiki.net .
Hooks used ParserFirstCallInit

The ExternalRedirect extension allows to create redirects to external pages in wiki.

Use this extension only on write-protected wikis/namespaces! Abuse of this extension poses security risk.

Usage

A new parser function externalredirect with URL as first and only parameter is registered.

Place something like this on wiki page to make it redirect to external site:

{{#externalredirect: https://www.mediawiki.org}}

This allows, for example, to add external links to Categories (by placing pages with externalredirect in them).

Installation

• Download, extract and place the file(s) in a directory called ExternalRedirect in your extensions/ folder.
• Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php file:

  require_once "$IP/extensions/ExternalRedirect/ExternalRedirect.php";
  

•  Done – Navigate to Special:Version on your wiki to verify that the extension is successfully installed.

Configuration

Populate this array with NUMERIC namespace IDs where external redirection should be allowed. Only allow on write-protected namespaces! See Manual:Namespace for more info on namespaces and numeric IDs. This example allows redirects from help pages (12) and pages from custom namespace with numeric ID 500.

$wgExternalRedirectNsIDs = array(
    12,
    500
);

Populate this array with page names (see magic word {{FULLPAGENAME}}) where external redirection should be allowed. Only allow on write-protected pages! This example allows redirects from the wiki pages about Warren G. Harding and the Teapot Dome Scandal.

$wgExternalRedirectPages = array(
    'Teapot Dome scandal',
    'Warren G. Harding'
);

The extension will redirect pages that are in the namespace(s) specified in $wgExternalRedirectNsIDs, as well as all of the pages specified in $wgExternalRedirectPages. Therefore you only need to set one of the arrays to get this to work, but you can set both if required.

Set this PCRE regex to achieve more strict destination URL validation. Allow ExternalRedirect only on write-protected namespaces/pages! Regular expressions are not always intuitive and there can be insecure redirects and various injection attacks exploitable on the target sites. This example would allow redirection to any page under https://www.mediawiki.org/ (this is not an example for a secure URL validation regex).

$wgExternalRedirectURLRegex = '/^https\:\/\/www\.mediawiki\.org\//i';

If $wgExternalRedirectURLRegex is specified it must be matched (in addition to $wgExternalRedirectNsIDs or $wgExternalRedirectPages) for the redirection to occur.

Whether to display link to redirection URL (along with error message) in case externalredirect is used where it is not allowed.

$wgExternalRedirectDeniedShowURL = false;

Security

This extension is meant for usage only on write-protected wikis/namespaces/pages. Here is an example how to add a name space editable only by the sysops. In "LocalSettings.php":

require_once "$IP/extensions/ExternalRedirect/ExternalRedirect.php";
define("NS_MOVED", 500);
$wgExtraNamespaces[NS_MOVED] = "Moved";
$wgNamespaceProtection[NS_MOVED]=array('redirector');
$wgNamespacesWithSubpages[NS_MOVED]=false;
$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['redirector']=true;
$wgExternalRedirectNsIDs = array(NS_MOVED);

With version 1.0.2 there is introduced basic URL validation (using wfParseUrl()) which prevents seriously malformed URLs, but still allows redirection to arbitrary sites.

In version 1.2.0 $wgExternalRedirectURLRegex setting is introduced.