Difference between revisions of "MediaWikiLite"

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As of version 1.13, MediaWiki natively supports the [http://www.sqlite.org SQLite] database which is a program library compiled in to PHP instead of running as a separate server outside of the PHP environment. A running instance of MediaWiki 1.15.1 using the SQLite database can be seen at [http://www.mediawikilite.org mediawikilite.org] to test the current functionality.
 
As of version 1.13, MediaWiki natively supports the [http://www.sqlite.org SQLite] database which is a program library compiled in to PHP instead of running as a separate server outside of the PHP environment. A running instance of MediaWiki 1.15.1 using the SQLite database can be seen at [http://www.mediawikilite.org mediawikilite.org] to test the current functionality.
  
To remove the need of an external web-server such as Apache or IIS, we're using [http://nanoweb.si.kz NanoWeb] which is a web-server entirely written entirely in PHP and comes with a number of modules such as a ReWrite clone for friendly URL's. It can execute CGI scripts using a normal CGI module or a FastCGI module.
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To remove the need of an external web-server such as Apache or IIS, we're using [http://nanoweb.si.kz NanoWeb] which is a web-server entirely written entirely in PHP and comes with a number of modules such as a [http://nanoweb.si.kz/manual/mod_rewrite.html mod-rewrite] clone for friendly URL's. It can execute CGI scripts using a normal CGI module or a FastCGI module.
  
 
== Proposed portable folder structure ==
 
== Proposed portable folder structure ==

Revision as of 04:58, 28 May 2010

The idea of MediaWikiLite is to allow the current MediaWiki codebase to run as a standalone server without requiring a database server or web-server. This forms the foundation for a number of alternative uses for the MediaWiki software in environments where the current LAMP architecture is too resource intensive.

There are a number of personal desktop wiki's out there, but they do not use the MediaWiki parser, and making a fork of the parser code defeats the purpose. Also, embedded devices such as PDA's, iPod's and iPhone's can only run lite applications effectively and getting MediaWiki onto them would be very useful, especially if it could synchronise with a web-based mirror when an internet connection becomes available.

A lite version of MediaWiki would make a possible candidate for a client side wiki interface to a P2P article space, i.e. a decentralised Wikipedia or PeerPedia.

Removing the web and database servers

As of version 1.13, MediaWiki natively supports the SQLite database which is a program library compiled in to PHP instead of running as a separate server outside of the PHP environment. A running instance of MediaWiki 1.15.1 using the SQLite database can be seen at mediawikilite.org to test the current functionality.

To remove the need of an external web-server such as Apache or IIS, we're using NanoWeb which is a web-server entirely written entirely in PHP and comes with a number of modules such as a mod-rewrite clone for friendly URL's. It can execute CGI scripts using a normal CGI module or a FastCGI module.

Proposed portable folder structure

Ideally this would be able to run without requiring any installation into the system, so that each personal wiki would be a folder containing the wikis SQLite content and the executable codebase that could be run from memory stick and taken from machine to machine without altering the machine in any permanent way.

The folder structure of a typical MediaWikiLite would be something like this:

The portable wiki's folder contains its own web server and a MediaWiki codebase. In its root there is a startup program made for each OS which has platform specific means of running a compiled MediaWikiLite (or a standalone PHP interpreter). The folder also contains the .sqlite data file containing all the content of the wiki.

Multiple instances and ports

Since there could be any number of these portable-wiki-folders we'd often want to run a number of them at once. Since each instance starts its own web-server it will also need to be on its own port. To get around this, the program should scan for the first available port (above say 20000) and install itself on that. It should also open a browser window at the homepage of the wiki so the user doesn't have to know the port number.

Current state

So far I've confirmed that the current version (1.15.3) of MediaWiki is able to run using the SQLite database and the NanoWeb PHP webserver on Ubuntu Linux. This is not running in a self-contained way though since PHP5 was installed the usual way and NanoWeb was installed from the Ubuntu APT repository. It does however illustrate that they are all able to operate happily together and furthermore article reads, edits, preference settings and special pages all came up very responsively. The next test is to do the same on Windows, I'm told that it's much less efficient on Windows due to the lack of PHP threading, but I'm hoping this problem only applies when trying to serve pages to multiple clients.

SQLite Installation

Currently we don't have a self-contained folder structure that MediaWikiLite's can run out of, so you'll need to ensure that SQLite is installed into the PHP environment properly. It's important to use SQLite3 rather than 2 because the former supports more similar syntax for some SQL such as table creation. Aside from that, version 3 uses more compact files and executes more efficiently because it works via PHP's PDO functions.

  • To install SQLite3 on a Debian based system, use apt-get install php5-sqlite3.
  • Check your phpinfo() to see if pdo_sqlite is listed, if not, try adding extension=php_pdo_sqlite.so into the dynamic extensions section of your php.ini

See also