Extension:PageProtection

MediaWiki extensions manual

PageProtection Release status: unknown
Implementation	parser extension (invalid type)
Description	Protect areas and sections from access
Latest version	1.4 (24-05-2006)
MediaWiki	1.6.3
Licence	No licence specified
Download	No link

PageProtection is an extension for MediaWiki (1.6.3) which enables you to protect specific areas by only allowing access to certain users / groups.

The extension is implemented as parser and hook in AlternateEdit. You can have multiple protected and unprotected areas on a single article where only allowed users see the protected areas, all other users see the rest.

Getting

The whole code with installation-instructions is now available from the following link:

• Current Version (1.4).

Features

• Protect pages / sections / textblocks
• Store protected texts RSA-encoded in database

  • not searchable
  • not displayed in diffs
  • if extensions is not loaded/fails/is deactivated, the content will not be displayed, but only the RSA-encoded text

• Mark sections as readonly

Usage

Surround text that should be protected by <protect users="..." groups="...">, </protect> tags.

Parameters

users Comma-separated list of allowed users.

groups Comma-separated list of allowed groups. 'sysop' will be automatically in this list, don't need to specify.

show What to print for users that don't have access. Possible Values:

• none - nothing is printed
• warning - Error-message is printed
• text - Plain-text is displayed but section is not editable (readonly)
• crypt - RSA-encrypted string is printed (debugging ...)
• page - Content of another page is printed

errorpage - Page to be displayed - can have {{{users}}} and {{{groups}}} as parameters.

The extension also registers the messages ProtectedSite and ProtectedSiteEditing that will be displayed for unauthorized users. These messages have two variables that will be replaced:

{{{USERS}}}

List of users that can access the area (links to ther user-pages)

{{{GROUPS}}}

List of groups that can access the area

ProtectedSite will be displayed when unallowed users want to read protected contents with show="warn" and ProtectedSiteEditing will be displayed when unallowed users want to edit protected contents.

Example

The following code would give admin1 and admin2 and all users of sysop read /write access to an area. All other users would see an information instead.

<protect users="admin1,admin2" groups="sysop">
Database-Settings
;Server
: localhost
...
</protect>

Code

• Current Version (1.4)
  • Patch for Working with 1.6.8 (experimental!; potential issue decribed here)
• Source code (version 1.1, 16 May 2006)
  • Modified source code by Jonabbey (version 0.7, 16 May 2006)

Changelog

1.4
 - Working with PHP4
1.3
 - Parameter show="none" did not work
 - Minor bugfixes in code and installation-manual
1.2
 - Redesign of internal structure (more classes)
 - Added value "text" to parameter "show" that allows marking sections as
readonly.
 - Disabled editing of sections as this adds currently unfixable security holes.

1.1
 - PEM-file for storing PEM-data now is automatically created
 - Bugfix
1.0
 - Texts are stored RSA-encrypted in database
 - When saving articles, the current user is automatically added
     to the permitted users.
 - Added parameter show=[warning, none, crypt, page] and parameter
             errorpage

Installation

Requirements

Needs at least MediaWiki 1.6 to run as it uses a hook to AlternateEdit which is first available in version 1.6 and later.

You need to have the following modules installed:

• Crypt_RSA http://pear.php.net/package/Crypt_RSA (min. version 1.2)
• Pear-Base http://pear.php.net/package/PEAR

Simply download, and unpack, keeping directory structure.

They have to be in the include-path. I placed them in mediawiki/pear and mediawiki/crypt. Additionally you have to create a file containing your private and public key that is localed in the mediawiki-folder.

Directory structure of my wiki

/mw
  |- index.php
  |- PEAR.php
  |- PEAR/
  |    | ...
  |- Crypt
  |- extensions
  |    |-  PageProtection.php
  |   ...

... the installation

Save the above code in extensions/PageProtection.php and add the following to LocalSettings.php

$wgCachePages       = false;
$wgCacheEpoch = 'date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S';

require_once("extensions/PageProtection.php");

I had to add the above deactivation of the cache as $parser->disableCache(); did not work for me. Better suggestions are welcome ;)

Tested environments

The extension has been successfully tested in the following environments:

• Gentoo Linux
  • MediaWiki 1.6.3, 1.7alpha (r14141)
  • Apache 2.0.55
  • PHP 5.1.2
  • MySQL 5.0.19
• SuSE Linux with XAMPP 1.5.2
  • MediaWiki 1.6.3
  • Apache 2.2.0
  • PHP 5.1.2
  • MySQL 5.0.20
• Windows 2000 with XAMPP 1.5.2
  • MediaWiki 1.6.3
  • Apache 2.2.0
  • PHP 5.1.1
  • MySQL 5.0.20
• Fedora Core 5
  • MediaWiki: 1.6.6, 1.7.1
  • Apache/2.2.0, 2.2.2
  • PHP: 5.1.4 (apache2handler) in safe mode , needed to instal PEAR in homedir because of user restrictions (i am not superuser), as described in install steps
  • MySQL: 5.0.22
• Debian GNU/Linux 3.1r2 Etch
  • MediaWiki: 1.6.7
  • Apache/2.0.55
  • PHP 5.1.4
  • MySQL 5.0.22
• Debian GNU/Linux 2.4.27-i686
  • MediaWiki: 1.6.7 (used Parser.php from 1.6.6 cos PP-patch for MW1.6.7 didn't work for me)
  • Apache/2.0.54 mod-ssl
  • PHP 4.3.10 (had to add the file_put_contents() function)
  • MySQL 5.0.19
  • don't know your test methods, but works for groups/edit/diff --Nad 02:55, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

See also

• Preventing Access, native MediaWiki features.
• A patch to enable Page access restriction with MediaWiki
• Hidden pages, solution based on namespaces.