Wildcard Search Extension

Background

By default Mediawiki does not allow wildcard searches (e.g. searching for rabbi* will return pages with rabbit, rabbits or rabbi) by default, but this can be easily turned on. It is possible to do this by changing several line in the Mediawiki code. However, this is not a recommended way, as it will create problems at future updates, etc. This 'extension' allows doing the same without changing the core mediawiki code.

How to

• First save this file as SearchMySQLwildcards.php in a sub-folder (let's say 'wildcardsearch' ) of extensions directory.

<?PHP
#Copyright (C) 2006 Assela Pathirana under the version 2 of the GNU General Public License
#Adds wildcard search functionality to mediawiki
# file : SearchMySQLwildcards.php

require_once( 'SearchEngine.php' );
require_once( 'SearchMySQL.php' );
require_once( 'SearchMySQL4.php' );

//Register this search type and override the default search set in DefaultSettins.php
$wgSearchType   = SearchMySQLwildcards;

//Create a new search class based on the parent
class SearchMySQLwildcards extends SearchMySQL4 {
        function legalSearchChars() {
                //include + and * as valid characters
                return "A-Za-z_'0-9¥¥x80-¥¥xFF¥¥-+*";
        }
}
$strictMatching=false;
?>

• Then add the following to the end of your LocalSettings.php file

require_once("extensions/wildcardsearch/SearchMySQLwildcards.php");

Note

The present code is for MySQL database type. For others changes are necessary.

Change log

08

32, 10 October 2006 (JST): Made a minor change to make the code compatible with 1.7.1 version of mediawiki. Thanks to Lars Pontoppidan for the suggestion.