Criteria for page selection


 * You can select articles based on:
 * The category/categories they are assigned to.
 * The number of categories they are assigned to.
 * Their namespace.
 * Their usage of templates.
 * Their title.
 * Their references to other articles.
 * Their character. (#redirect or normal article)
 * Their revision date.


 * You can restrict the number of articles to a certain limit:
 * Via configuration settings within the DPL3 source.
 * Via a specific parameter for a given invocation of DPL3.


 * You can select a subset from the result list by random.

category
Syntax:

or or

You can either use the pipe symbol for logical OR, or you can use the & symbol for logical AND. Mixing both is not possible! If you specify more than one  line, their arguments will be implicitly connected with AND. Thus, you can build a logical expression where you have several AND terms, with each term consisting of an OR group of categories.

{{note|Important: the  command uses the pipe symbol to delimit its arguments (logical OR). When using DPL with parser function syntax (the more powerful syntax), you MUST escape the pipe with either the broken pipe  symbol, or the   magic word:

Example:

category=Countries in Africa|Countries in United Kingdom category=Part of NATO

or

{{#dpl: }}
 * category=Countries in Africa¦Countries in United Kingdom
 * category=Part of NATO

or

{{#dpl: }}
 * category=Countries in Africa{{!}}Countries in United Kingdom
 * category=Part of NATO

This list will output pages that have Category:Countries in Africa OR Category:Countries in United Kingdom, AND Category:Part of NATO listed. See {{example|category|p=y}} for working examples.

You can specify the set of Uncategorized pages as a normal category, with the keyword  (e.g., ' ' for uncategorized pages only, ' ' or ' ' for the Uncategorized or the Animals category, ' ' for the Mammals category, uncategorized pages or the Insects category, etc.). {{note|In some special cases (when DPL queries refer to 'uncategorized pages') DPL needs a special database view in the MySQL database, though this information may be outdated because it originated from earlier related extensions.|warn}}

Notes:


 * If you put a  before the name of a category, DPL will add all DIRECT subcategories of that category to your statement.
 * Using TWO asterisks will extend the tree search to two levels. This provides some minimal support for hierarchies of categories. The syntax and/or semantics of this feature might be changed in a future version.

Example:

{{#dpl: }} This list will output pages that have Category:Countries in Europe OR Category:Countries in North America, AND ( Category:Part of NATO or a direct subcategory or a second level subcategory of the latter ) listed.
 * category=Countries in Europe¦Countries in North America
 * category=*Part of NATO
 * noresultsheader= no result returned

Result:

{{#dpl: }}
 * category=Countries in Europe¦Countries in North America
 * category=*Part of NATO
 * noresultsheader= no result returned

If {{DPL|ordermethod}}=category,... and {{DPL|headingmode}} are enabled, you can restrict the categories you want as headings in the result by preceding the list of categories (specified with the category parameter) with a '+' or '-'. See the example below.
 * A '+' means that only the categories listed in that statement are allowed to appear as headings in the output.
 * A '-' means that the categories listed in that statement are NOT allowed to appear as headings in the output (but all others).

Example:

category=+Countries in Europe¦Countries in North America headingmode=ordered ordermethod=category,pagetouched noresultsheader=\nno result returned This list will output pages that have Category:Countries in Europe OR Category:Countries in North America, AND ( Category:Part of NATO or a direct subcategory or a second level subcategory of the latter ) listed. The list will be ordered (OL tag) and organized in main items/headings, subcategories will not be used as a heading). Under each item/heading you will see a sublist of pages ordered by their {{DPL|ordermethod}} value, for the category used as the heading.

Result: category=+Countries in Europe¦Countries in North America headingmode=ordered ordermethod=category,pagetouched noresultsheader=\nno result returned {{tempnote}}

Notes:


 * If you want to use magic words like {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}, {{CURRENTDAY}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}} etc. in the category name, you must use the parser function syntax variant.


 * To prevent a DPL query from returning huge output (or consuming too many resources) there are some configuration variables (see DynamicPageList3 on MediaWiki Wiki) in the source code of the extension module like,  ,.


 * Using the category statement without an argument will have no effect (note that in previous DPL versions, this acted like category=_none_).

categorymatch
Syntax:

A  is used to denote "any number of any characters".

Example:

This list will output pages that belong to categories that end in "Europe" or "North America", like "Countries in Europe", or "Countries in North America" etc.

Result:

categoryregexp
The complete text behind "categoryregexp" will be taken as ONE argument and used in a SQL REGEXP clause, i.e.,  characters can be used as a normal part of the regexp.

notcategory
Syntax:

Example:

category=Countries in Europe‎ notcategory=NATO membership debates‎ notcategory=Another example category

This list will output pages that belong to Category:Countries in Europe‎ but do not belong to either Category:NATO membership debates‎ or (a non-existing example category only).

Result:

category=Countries in Europe notcategory=NATO membership debates‎ notcategory=Another example category

Notes:


 * If you use the parser function syntax you will be able to use Magic words like August, 27, 2024 etc. in the category name.


 * Related DPL extension variables (see DynamicPageList3 on MediaWiki Wiki):,  ,.

categoriesminmax
Syntax:

Example:

The list will only contain articles which belong to Category:Countries in Europe and at least to three other categories (for a total of four).

Result:

Example:

The list will only contain articles which belong to category Category:Countries in Europe and are only assigned to one other category.

Result:

namespace
Syntax:

The namespace name may be any one, assuming it represents a valid namespace in the system, including custom ones, BUT no pseudo-namespace such as Media, Special which have negative namespace IDs. The empty string is the main article namespace (e.g., ' ' for pages in Main ns only, ' ' or ' ' for Main or Talk ns, ' ' for User, Main or Category, etc.).

Name spaces are case-sensitive   will work, but   will not.

Instead of using the title of a namespace, you can also use its numeric ID—although this is not recommended. DPL will always try to interpret the argument as a name first. So, if you create a user namespace with the title "1" (which is possible in principle) DPL will take this namespace if given a "1" as an argument. In this case, the "Talk" namespace (which has the numeric id '1') cannot be specified by its number, but only by the literal "Talk".

Example:

This list will output pages that are in the Talk or Help talk namespace and belong to Category:Number examples.

Result:

Example (with magic word):

This list will output articles that are in the namespace the current page is in—whatever it is, in this case blank (which is Main)—and that belong to Category:Number examples.

Result:

notnamespace
Syntax:

Example:

This list will output pages that are NEITHER in the Talk NOR in the Help_talk namespace.

Result:

Example (with magic word):

This list will output pages that are NEITHER in the Talk NOR in the namespace the current page is in.

linksfrom
Syntax:

The page mentioned in the DPL query can be retrieved via.

Example:

This list will output pages that are mentioned (hyperlinked) in article Five in the Main namespace (by default), that belong to category Category:Number examples.

Result:

Notes:
 * Normally 'linksfrom' will only show existing pages. With  this can be changed.
 * The  parameter can be used to control the amount of output you get.

openreferences
Syntax:

Example:

This list will output pages that are mentioned (with a hyperlink) in the article Apple, regardless of whether the page(s) exist or not (though it will not include a self-reference).

Result:

notlinksfrom
Syntax:

Similar to, you could use the   Magic Word, and not include any pages linked to from the current page. This, however, will generally result in errors.

linksto
Syntax:

The page mentioned in the DPL query can be retrieved via.

A -sign can be used as a wildcard (SQL-LIKE expression).

If you specify more than one linksto condition, they will act as a logical AND. In this case, the  variable will point to the FIRST condition.

Example:

This list will output pages that are in Category:Number examples that link to pages with  in the name (such as page Two) that are in the Main namespace (by default). To make the comparison case-insensitive, use the parameter.

Note: If two criteria are set, and a page links to both it will appear twice in the output. Use  to see the name of the page it links to.

Example 2 (with magic word):

This list will output pages that are in Category:Number examples and that link to the current page, whatever it is.

Note that the  parameter can be used to control the amount of output you get.

notlinksto
Syntax:

Example:

This list will output pages that are in Category:Number examples and do not have a link pointing to a page with title London or Paris in the Main namespace.

Result:

Notes:
 * The implementation of this feature is not very efficient. Use with care and avoid huge result sets.
 * The  parameter can be used to control the amount of output you get.

linkstoexternal
Syntax:

This command selects pages which contain external http links that match a certain pattern. The pattern is used in SQL LIKE expression, i.e., _ and  are treated as special symbols that match any character respecting a group of arbitrary characters.

The pattern is case-sensitive!

The pattern is matched against the whole URL. Therefore, you need to put  around the pattern if you only give part of the string: linkstoexternal=%mywebpage%

If you specify more than one linkstoexternal item, a page must match ALL conditions (logical AND).

The URL of the external link can be retrieved via.

See also the addexternallink command.

imageused
Syntax:

Example:

As you can see, the Namespace 'Image' need not be specified.

Note: There is a variable  which contains the image name(s) used for selection.

imagecontainer
Syntax:

Example:

This statement will show all images which are contained in the two articles Apple and Orange. Normally, we would only get the names of images that really exist. But because we have specified  we will also see non-existing images, including those not housed locally, such as images used from Wikimedia Commons. Normally, we would get a list of image names. Setting the parameter escapelinks to false, however, causes that we will see existing images directly. Non-existing images will be displayed as red links.

See example.

uses
Syntax:

The "Template" namespace must be specified. You can also specify another namespace if you like.

Example:

This list will output pages that use a template called Fruit-Infobox, limited to three results using.

Note: It is not possible to find pages that use 2 templates (e.g., Template:Foo AND Template:Bar).

notuses
Syntax:

Example:

This list will output pages in Category:Fruit examples which do not use Template:Color.

usedby
Syntax:

Example:

This will create a list of all pages which are included by (used on) the Apple page.

createdby
Syntax:

Notes (applies for all user related selection criteria):


 * You can combine user related selections. For example, you could search for pages which were not created by user1 but modified by him, or you could search for pages which were created by user1 and lastmodified by user. You can also show several or all versions of such articles by specifying one or more of the "revision" group of parameters, like allrevisionsbefore.
 * Currently, there is no mechanism to make a distinction between minor edits and normal modifications

notcreatedby
Syntax:

Note: To avoid huge result sets, this will typically be accompanied by other selection criteria.

modifiedby
Syntax:

Note: modifiedby will always be a superset of createdby as the creation of a page is interpreted as its first modification.

notmodifiedby
Syntax:

Note: To avoid huge result sets, this will typically be accompanied by other selection criteria.

lastmodifiedby
Syntax:

notlastmodifiedby
Syntax:

Note: To avoid huge result sets, this will typically be accompanied by other selection criteria.

Select articles based on TITLE
There are several possibilities to select articles by their title. When the titles of matching articles are displayed later in the output list, their names can be shown in different ways: The namespace may be shown or skipped and even parts of the name can be changed. See shownamespace, replaceintitle, escapelinks and titlemaxlength for details.

title
Syntax:

If you specify a "title", the "mode" will be automatically set to "userformat" which means that you will get no output by default. Specifying an exact "title" makes sense if you want to transclude contents from one specific other page, e.g., the whole text, a chapter, labeled sections or template calls.

Thus, DPL may serve as a more flexible alternative to Labeled Section Transclusion.

Example:

This example will include the contents of the "Notes" section/heading of the Apple article, in the main namespace.

This example will take all invocations of template "Color" in article Apple and will include and apply "Template:Color". The output will be separated by horizontal lines.

titlelt (Previously title&lt;)
Syntax:

The string given need not be a valid page title.

If this parameter is set together with 'ASCENDING' order and a limit, you will get the pages which are immediately 'below' the given string. This allows efficient scrolling through huge result sets.

For details, see.

titlegt (Previously title&gt;)
Syntax:

The string given need not be a valid page title.

If this parameter is set together with 'ASCENDING' order and a count limit, you will get the pages which are immediately 'above' the given string. This allows efficient scrolling through huge result sets.

For details, see.

scroll
Syntax:

If this command is given, DPL will interpret some special arguments in the URL.

DPL_count      limit number of pages to show DPL_offset     where to start (nth page) DPL_refresh    whether to purge the special DPL cache or not DPL_fromTitle  page name to start after (will be passed to title< ) DPL_toTitle    page name to end with (will be passed to title>, needed for reverse scroll) DPL_findTitle  page name to start with (will be passed to title>= ) DPL_scrolldir  direction of scroll (can be 'up' or 'down')

For details, see.

titlematch
Syntax:

Example:

This will output all pages (regardless of namespace) which have a name that contains "pple" somewhere in the title or start with "Oran".

Result:

Example:

This will output all pages in the main namespace which begin with "Appl".

Result:

Notes:


 * The match is case-sensitive, even with respect to the first character; to make it case-insensitive, use the parameter.
 * Spaces are translated to \_ (escaped underscore) as MediaWiki internally stores names with underscores instead of spaces. Using an underscore in your  argument means 'any single character' in SQL LIKE expressions.

titleregexp
Syntax:

Example:

This will output pages (regardless of namespace) which have a digit in their name and end with a "y" (limited to five results). Use the parameter  to make the comparison case-insensitive.

nottitlematch
Syntax:

Example:

This will output all pages (regardless of namespace) which do not contain an "p" or a "r" in their title (it will not exclude titles containing "P" because it is case-sensitive).

Result:

nottitleregexp
Syntax:

includematch
Syntax:

The idea is that a page will only be selected (and its contents included) if the contents to be included matches a regular expression. In case of (heading based) chapter inclusion and labeled section inclusion, the relevant contents of the page must match the pattern; in case of template based matching it is the complete wikitext of the calling code of your template which is tested against your regular expression. Be careful to design your regexp in a proper way so that it can match all syntactical variations, and note that we use Perl regular expressions. This means that you must delimit your regexp with two identical characters that are not part of the regexp itself, e.g., with. Otherwise, you will see strange error messages from the php interpreter...

If you are not familiar with regular expressions and/or do not know the specifics of Perl regexp used in PHP, you should definitely have a look into the PHP manual before using.

For named parameters you should use something like this, to be on the safe side: includematch=/\|\s*myParameter\s*=\s*myPattern/s Thus, you can put spaces around the  and use linebreaks in your original article when calling the template—and still, the pattern will match. Note: You must use  to produce a pipe symbol—otherwise the pipe will break the parameter structure of your DPL call.

For unnamed parameters you would specify something like: includematch=/\|\s*myPattern/s If the parameter is not the last one in your template call, you might use includematch=/\|\s*myPattern\s*\|/s

Note that in combination with templates, the regexp matching will only work if you produce some output at all via the  statement. So, if you call a dummy parameter only or if you call a phantom template that does not produce any output, you will see no matches. It is, however, sufficient to produce a space character to get output. It is not necessary to output the parameter which matches your regexp.

See the  parameter.

Example:

This will match articles which contain a call to the template "Fruit-Infobox" and use the "grows" parameter of that template with an argument that contains "Vines" or "vines" as a text string. This example is formatted simple output.

Result:

Notes:


 * There is no pattern specified for the first element of the  statement. "VINES" would not match; we could use the "i" modifier with the regexp to match without case sensitivity if we wanted to.
 * Remember, pipe must be replaced with either, or with broken pipe   in   when parser function    is used, or the statement won't work because it the pipe would be mistaken as a field delimiter for #dpl itself and break the parameter structure of your DPL call.

If you want to stop the pattern matching at field boundaries (i.e., at pipe characters) you might use includematch=/languages\s*=\s*[^|]*English/s

Example:

category=Countries in North America include={Country-Infobox}:capital:population includematch=/capital\s*=\s*[^|]*Ottawa/s table=class="wikitable sortable",Capital,Population

This will match articles which contain a call to the template "Country-Infobox" and use the "capital" parameter of that template with an arguement that contains "Ottawa" as a text string. It would stop pattern matching after the line containing. This example is formatted simple output.

Result:

category=Countries in North America include={Country-Infobox}:capital:population includematch=/capital\s*=\s*[^|]*Ottawa/s table=class="wikitable sortable",Country,Capital,Population

includematchparsed
Works exactly like but the contents will be parsed before it is tested against the regular expression.

includenotmatch
Syntax:

The idea is that a page will only be selected (and its contents included) if the contents to be included does not match a given regular expression. In case of (heading based) chapter inclusion and labelled section inclusion, the relevant contents of the page must not match the pattern; in case of template based matching, it is the calling code of your template which must not match the regular expression. Be careful to design your regexp in a proper way so that it covers all syntactical variations. You should use something like includenotmatch=myParameter\s*=\s*myPattern/s to be on the safe side. Thus, you can put spaces around the '=' and use linebreaks in your original article when calling the template—and still, the pattern will do its job.

See the  parameter.

Example:

This will match articles which contain a call to the template "Country-Infobox" and use the "capital" parameter of that template with an argument that does not contain "Ottawa" or "ottawa" as a text string. Note that there is no pattern specified for the first element of the  statement. "OTTAWA" would not match; we could use the "i" modifier with the regexp to match without case sensitivity if we wanted so.

includenotmatchparsed
works exactly like but the contents will be parsed before it is tested against the regular expression.

Select articles based on REVISION dates
By default, DPL uses "Y-m-d H:i:s" to display date and time. Note that MediaWiki stores all dates/times in UTC format. When displaying a time stamp, DPL will translate it according to
 * 1) the timezone preference (difference to UTC/GMT) given by the user in his user settings
 * 2) if no preference is given and for all anonymous users, the local time on the server will be used.

So you will either see a time based on your local time (browser based) or based on the timezone in which the wiki server is running.

The same kind of translation applies to dates you specify when selecting articles by revision date/time.

lastrevisionbefore
Syntax:

dateandoptionaltime is a numeric string of up to 14 digits, like "200812041300" (4th of Dec, 2008, 13:00). The string may contain separation characters like "2008/12/04--13:00".

Note: if this parameter is used, the variable  will contain the revision of the selected page(s).

firstrevisionsince
Syntax:

dateandoptionaltime is a numeric string of up to 14 digits, like "200812041300" (4th of Dec, 2008, 13:00) The string may contain separation characters like "2008/12/04--13:00".

Note: if this parameter is used, the variable  will contain the revision of the selected page(s).

allrevisionsbefore
Syntax:

dateandoptionaltime is a numeric string of up to 14 digits, like "200812041300" (4th of Dec, 2008, 13:00) The string may contain separation characters like "2008/12/04--13:00".

Note: if this parameter is used, the variable  will contain the revision of the selected page(s).

allrevisionssince
Syntax:

dateandoptionaltime is a numeric string of up to 14 digits, like "200812041300" (4th of Dec, 2008, 13:00) The string may contain separation characters like "2008/12/04--13:00".

Note: if this parameter is used, the variable  will contain the revision of the selected page(s).

maxrevisions
Syntax:

number must be greater or equal than 1.

minrevisions
Syntax:

number must be greater or equal than 1. In practice, only values of 2 or greater make sense. Using a value of 2, you could exclude freshly created pages from a result set.

articlecategory
Syntax:

If you want to select articles in namespace=Talk you can use this statement to define (in addition) a category for an article with identical name in namespace 0 (default namespace).

includesubpages
Syntax:

As subpages are by default always included, only 'no' or 'false' makes sense as an argument for.

redirects
Syntax:

criteria can be one of:
 * exclude &mdash; excludes redirect pages from lists &mdash; (default)
 * include &mdash; allows redirect pages to appear in lists
 * only &mdash; lists only redirect pages in lists

Example:

The result will consist of content pages and redirect pages in the Category:Countries in North America (US is a redirect to United States).

Note: this parameter does not show pages that link to the redirect (as Special:Whatlinkshere/United States does); only redirect pages themselves.

minoredits
Requires:

Example:

criteria can be one of:
 * exclude &mdash; ignore minor edits when sorting lists
 * include &mdash; includes minor edits to sort lists &mdash; (default)

Example:

This list will order pages tagged with Category:Countries in North America by lastedit, but minor edits will be ignored in the ordering.

stablepages
Syntax:

default is.

Purpose:

This parameter is only useful if your wiki uses FlaggedRevs. It allows you to control whether pages flagged as 'stable' will be part of the DPL result or not.

qualitypages
Syntax:

default is.

Purpose: This parameter is only useful if your wiki uses FlaggedRevs. It allows you to control whether pages flagged as 'quality pages' will be part of the DPL result or not.

skipthispage
Syntax:

The default is, i.e., a query from a page will not include that page itself, even if it otherwise meets the query's criteria. Setting this parameter to 'no' may lead to runtime errors which are hard to track down. You should only use that parameter if your query is straightforward in its structure, and you need the current page to show up in the result (if it matches the selection criteria).

count
Syntax:

, with  a positive integer

A blank value for unlimited. It is limited to 500 by default, depending on extension variables (see DynamicPageList3 on MediaWiki Wiki):,.

Example:

This list will output the two pages most recently changed that are categorized in Category:Fruit examples.

If 'count' is missing, it can be set from outside via the URL parameter.

scroll
Syntax:

Huge result sets can be split into smaller parts. DPL allows you to fetch parts of a huge result set by setting auxiliary selection criteria. demonstrates the principle. It uses a Scroll helper template which generates links to scroll forward and backward through a long result list. To make this possible, it relies on variables which give the name of the first and last result item actually shown. The command  is used to fill these variables with proper values and to set the title limits according to URL parameters derived from these variables.

See also.

Example:

See

offset
Syntax:

with n = number of result lines to skip, (integer), default = 0

Example:

This will show articles #3 .. #6 of category Fruit examples; order is determined by alphabet as we did not give any specific ordermethod.

Notes:


 * You could put a DPL query into a template and make count & offset parameters. Calling this template with different values will allow you to display different portions of the result list.
 * if you use  the numbers will be adjusted to reflect the absolute position of the entries, i.e., in the above example you will see numbers starting from 11.
 * If 'offset' is missing, it can be set from outside via the URL parameter DPL_offset.

randomcount
Syntax:

, with  a positive integer

If randomcount is larger than the number of results, the complete result set will be displayed.

Example:

This list will output three random articles from the group of the 7 largest articles in Category:Fruit examples.

randomseed
Syntax:

, with  a positive integer

Example:

This will set the random seed to a new value every day. Using this on your homepage, you could present a stable set of random articles for one day and switch to another set every day.

distinct
Syntax:

Normally, distinct is set to. This means that a page will occur only once in the output.

In connection with  and , however, a page can occur more than once in the output. This happens if you specify more than one page for the /  parameter and the same page contains links to more than one of them  or if the same page is referenced by more than one of them. If you want to see a page only once also in these cases, use.

On the other hand, if you wish to see mutiple result entries, you should switch this to. This may make sense in combination with  or   if you want to see how many links from one document to another document exist.

ignorecase
Syntax:

The default is case sensitivity. So only  makes sense as an argument.

The parameter has an effect on,  ,  ,   and their  -equivalents.

For case-insensitivity in ordering result sets, see.