User talk:The Transhumanist/StripSearchInWikicode.js

This is the workshop support page for the user script StripSearchInWikicode.js. Comments and requests concerning the program are most welcome. Please post discussion threads below the section titled Discussions. Thank you. By the way, the various scripts I have written are listed at the bottom of the page.

This script is functional, but when cut and pasted into WikEd, the results are double spaced. If you can figure out how the script can remove the extra linefeeds, please let me know. Thank you.

StripSearchInWikicode.js: strips search results down to bare pagenames and adds bullet list wikicode formatting for easy copying and pasting into articles. For Vector skin only.

Script's workshop

This is the work area for developing the script and its documentation. The talk page portion of this page starts at #Discussions, below.

Description / instruction manual

This script is functional, but when cut and pasted into WikEd, the results are double spaced. If you can figure out how the script can remove the extra linefeeds, please let me know. Thank you.

StripSearchInWikicode.js: strips search results down to bare pagenames and adds bullet list wikicode formatting for easy copying and pasting into articles. It also removes redirected entries, and is especially useful for "intitle:" searches. For Vector skin only.

This reduces the search results to a list of links. It strips out the data between the page names, including that annoying "from redirect" note. It adds * [[]] to each entry so they look like this:

* [[John Wayne]]
* [[Clint Eastwood]]
* [[Brad Pitt]]
* [[Dwayne Johnson]]
* [[Tom Cruise]]

This makes it easier to copy and paste the links from search results into articles.

Once installed, the script automatically processes your Wikipedia search results.

To install, add this line to your vector.js page:

How to install this script

Important: this script was developed for use with the Vector skin (it's Wikipedia's default skin), and might not work with other skins. See the top of your Preferences appearance page, to be sure Vector is the chosen skin for your account.

To install this script, add this line to your vector.js page:

importScript("User:The Transhumanist/StripSearchInWikicode.js");

Save the page and bypass your cache to make sure the changes take effect. By the way, only logged-in users can install scripts.

If you want the detail back in your search results, remove that line, or comment it out by placing two forward slashes (//) at the beginning of it.

Explanatory notes (source code walk-through)

This section explains the source code, in detail. It is for JavaScript programmers, and for those who want to learn how to program in JavaScript. Hopefully, this will enable you to adapt existing source code into new user scripts with greater ease, and perhaps even compose user scripts from scratch.

You can only use so many comments in the source code before you start to choke or bury the programming itself. So, I've put short summaries in the source code, and have provided in-depth explanations here.

My intention is Threefold:

1. to thoroughly document the script so that even relatively new JavaScript programmers can understand what it does and how it works, including the underlying programming conventions. This is so that the components and approaches can be modified, or used again and again elsewhere, with confidence. (I often build scripts by copying and pasting code that I don't fully understand, which often leads to getting stuck). To prevent getting stuck, the notes below include extensive interpretations, explanations, instructions, examples, and links to relevant documentation and tutorials, etc. Hopefully, this will help both you and I grok the source code and the language it is written in (JavaScript).
2. to refresh my memory of exactly how the script works, in case I don't look at the source code for weeks or months.
3. to document my understanding, so that it can be corrected. If you see that I have a misconception about something, please let me know!

In addition to plain vanilla JavaScript code, this script relies heavily on the jQuery library.

If you have any comments or questions, feel free to post them at the bottom of this page under Discussions. Be sure to {{ping}} me when you do.

General approach

The script uses the jQuery method .hide() for stripping the elements by class name. Here's an example of stripping out elements with the class name "searchalttitle":

$( ".searchalttitle" ).hide();

Learn about methods at https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_object_methods.asp

Learn about .hide at http://api.jquery.com/hide/

Aliases

An alias is one string defined to mean another. Another term for "alias" is "shortcut". In the script, the following aliases are used:

$ is the alias for jQuery (the jQuery library)

mw is the alias for mediawiki (the mediawiki library)

These two aliases are set up like this:

( function ( mw, $ ) {}( mediaWiki, jQuery ) );

That also happens to be a "bodyguard function", which is explained in the section below...

Bodyguard function

The bodyguard function assigns an alias for a name within the function, and reserves that alias for that purpose only. For example, if you want "t" to be interpreted only as "transhumanist".

Since the script uses jQuery, we want to defend jQuery's alias, the "$". The bodyguard function makes it so that "$" means only "jQuery" inside the function, even if it means something else outside the function. That is, it prevents other javascript libraries from overwriting the $() shortcut for jQuery within the function. It does this via scoping.

The bodyguard function is used like a wrapper, with the alias-containing source code inside it, typically, wrapping the whole rest of the script. Here's what a jQuery bodyguard function looks like:

1 ( function($) {
2     // you put the body of the script here
3 } ) ( jQuery );

See also: bodyguard function solution.

To extend that to lock in "mw" to mean "mediawiki", use the following (this is what the script uses):

1 ( function(mw, $) {
2     // you put the body of the script here
3 } ) (mediawiki, jQuery);

For the best explanation of the bodyguard function I've found so far, see: Solving "$(document).ready is not a function" and other problems   (Long live Spartacus!)

The ready() event listener/handler

The ready() event listener/handler makes the rest of the script wait until the page (and its DOM) is loaded and ready to be worked on. If the script tries to do its thing before the page is loaded, there won't be anything there for the script to work on (such as with scripts that will have nowhere to place the menu item mw.util.addPortletLink), and the script will fail.

In jQuery, it looks like this: $( document ).ready(function() {});

You can do that in jQuery shorthand, like this:

$().ready( function() {} );

Or even like this:

$(function() {});

The part of the script that is being made to wait goes inside the curly brackets. But you would generally start that on the next line, and put the ending curly bracket, closing parenthesis, and semicolon following that on a line of their own), like this:

1 $(function() {
2     // Body of function (or even the rest of the script) goes here, such as a click handler.
3 });

This is all explained further at the jQuery page for .ready()

For the plain vanilla version see: http://docs.jquery.com/Tutorials:Introducing_$(document).ready()

Activation filters

I didn't know what else to call these. I wanted the program to only work when intended, and only on intended pages (search result pages). So, I applied the conditional, if.

I use the Vector skin, and haven't tested the script on any other skin, so the script basically says "if the vector skin is in use, do what's between the curly brackets". (Which includes the entire rest of the program).

// Only activate on Vector skin
        if ( mw.config.get( 'skin' ) === 'vector' ) {

	        // Run this script only if " - Search results - Wikipedia" is in the page title
			if (document.title.indexOf(" - Search results - Wikipedia") != -1) {

Prep work

There is no prep work in this script. This would be the declaration of global variables and so on.

Core program

This is the part that controls the main flow of the script (decides what to do under what circumstances):

            if ( mw.config.get( 'skin' ) === 'vector' ) {
                $( function() {

                    // hide elements by class per http://api.jquery.com/hide
                    $( ".searchalttitle" ).hide();
                    $( ".searchresult" ).hide();
                    $( ".mw-search-result-data" ).hide();

                } );
            }

So, what this does is 4 things:

First, it checks if the Vector skin is being used and runs the rest of the script only if it is.

Then it applies the jQuery method .hide on all elements labeled as any of these 3 classes: searchalttitle, searchresult, or mw-search-result-data.

To use an object method, you append it to the end of an element, as is done with .hide() 3 times above. Don't forget the parentheses, and be sure to end your statements with a semicolon.

Learn more about .hide at http://api.jquery.com/hide/

mw.config.get ( 'skin' )

This looks up the value for skin (the internal name of the currently used skin) saved in MediaWiki's configuration file.

• jQuery get() Method
• mw.config

logical operators

"===" means "equal value and equal type"

• JavaScript Comparison and Logical Operators

Strip out the sister project results

                    // hide elements of Results from sister projects (per http://api.jquery.com/hide)
                    $( ".iw-headline" ).hide();
                    $( ".iw-results" ).hide();
                    $( ".iw-resultset" ).hide();
                    $( ".iw-result__title" ).hide();
                    $( ".iw-result__content" ).hide();
                    $( ".iw-result__footer" ).hide();

I went through the pagesource looking for the classes of the data displayed in the right-hand column, and inserted them into the code above. (I assume "iw" stands for "interwiki").

Change log

• 2017-09-29
  • Started script from a copy of User:The Transhumanist/StripSearch.js
• 2017-09-30
• 2017-10-01

Task list

Desired/completed features

Completed features are marked with  Done

Development notes

Adding the wikicode

Evad37 nailed it in discussion below

The elements that I wish to change have the class mw-search-result-heading.

Each one has an anchor element within it. Perhaps those can be sandwiched with the desired wikicode (between the double square brackets).

removing the redirected entries

Evad37 nailed it in discussion below

Maybe using .splice could work, if regex could be applied somehow.

     for (var i = 0; i < x.length; i++) {
        // if current array item matches "searchalttitle"
            // remove it from array
            // x.splice(i)
            // i = i--
    }

In the loop above, splicing (removing) the current item would shift the next item into its position. When the loop iterates to the next item, it will have inadvertently skipped one. After splicing, you'd have to decrement i by one.

Or use forEach, and...

push all non-matches in a new array, and at the end of forEach replace the original array with the new one.

Or, using standard for loop...

iterate over the array index and decrease the loop index i-- whenever you find a match

more solutions

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40700582/how-to-remove-objects-from-array-when-splice-reorders – create a filter function
  • MDN - Array.prototype.filter

Improve the way the script hides

Seems like you could hide each entire search result and then unhide the element of interest, which is the pagename. --Izno (talk) 13:17, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Get rid of the extraneous linefeeds

The search results are double spaced, which shows up as a blank line between each list item when you cut and paste to an edit window.

First, it might help to be able to see the control characters (like linefeed, \n). One way to look for them is with this:

// Inspect the raw text, so you can look for \n linefeeds
$(".mw-search-results").each(function(index) {
    let mwsr_text = JSON.stringify($(this).text());
    alert(mwsr_text);
});

This showed the text, but didn't show the linefeeds (\n). Logically, they must be there. The linefeed characters don't show up in the editor I cut and pasted them into. But the editor's search/replace is still able to find/replace them. Therefore, it might be possible to use regex in JS to get rid of them on the web page.

So, I tried the following code to remove linefeeds (\n), but it didn't work.

var str = $(".mw-search-results").html();
var regex = /\n/gi;
$(".mw-search-results").html(str.replace(regex, ""));

I tried it on \s, and it got rid of the linefeeds along with all the other white space characters. Which means they may be specifically accessible.

Discussions

Post messages below.

Script to format search results as a list of page names with bullet list wikicode provided

(Originally posted to User:Evad37).

I've written a script called StripSearch.js that unclutters search results to make them bare lists of page names. [Editor's note: The name was later changed to StripSearchSimple.js].

Now I'm writing a sequel to it called StripSearchInWikicode.js.

I would like the output of search results to look like this:

* [[Benjamin Franklin]]
* [[Larry Page]]
* [[Carl Sagan]]
* [[Hillary Clinton]]
* [[Warren Oates]]

...for easy copying and pasting into articles.

I'm having trouble manipulating the elements of class "mw-search-result-heading".

I gather that you put them into an array like this:

var x = document.getElementsByClassName("mw-search-result-heading");

I'd like to subject the items in that array to a regex, using the jQuery .each method, or the .each function, but I don't know how. The documentation is confusing as hell.

I think the search string (<a.*a>) and replacement string * [[$1]] ought to work.

Any pointers would be most appreciated.

Sincerely, The Transhumanist 12:58, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

@The Transhumanist: You don't really need anything that complicated – you can just insert content before and after each element with class "mw-search-result-heading" using jQuery's prepend and append methods:

$(".mw-search-result-heading").prepend('* [[').append(']]');

just about does the trick. - Evad37 [talk] 13:51, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Or even better

$(".mw-search-result-heading").children().before('* [[').after(']]');

(this avoids leaving a space before the ]]) - Evad37 [talk] 13:53, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

You are right, the first method would be perfect if it didn't insert an extraneous space.

The second method inserts * [[]] unexpectedly on the same line after various entries, like this (searched for "genre"):

* [[Genre]]

* [[Genre art]]

* [[Rapping]] * [[]]

* [[Pop music]] * [[]]

* [[Trap music]] * [[]]

Is there a way to apply regex, to avoid both problems?

Another feature I would love the script to have is to strip redirected entries out of the search results. Those are the mw-search-result-heading entries that include searchalttitle inside their divs. I would like to remove just those instances of mw-search-result-heading.

Adding that feature would probably also solve the bug in the second method you presented above.

Would .not work for this, to hide divs with the class mw-search-result-heading except for those that do not contain searchalttitle?

Unfortunately, I don't know how to apply regex to facilitate matches for this type of thing. I can construct regex strings, I just don't know how to put them into play.

Forgoing jQuery, I think a for loop could be set up like this:

    // Strip out redirected entries
    var x = document.getElementsByClassName("mw-search-result-heading");
    for (i = 0; i < x.length; i++) {
        // somehow remove this entry if
        // it contains element of class "searchalttitle"
    }

But I don't know how to write the guts.

By the way, the script failed when I ran it with that empty for loop, and it failed when I tried sorting the array, like this:

    // Sort the search results
    var x = document.getElementsByClassName("mw-search-result-heading");
    x.sort();

It's enough to make one's head spin. :) The Transhumanist 20:50, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Loops and regex aren't always the best tools, especially when working with collections of elements. jQuery has several ways to filter and refine results. One way would be to only apply * [[]] to the first-child elements within .mw-search-result-heading like so:

$(".mw-search-result-heading").children().filter(':first-child').before('* [[').after(']]');

Another way, like you alluded to above, is to first remove the searchalttitle elements, and then the * [[]] can be added safely:

$(".searchalttitle").remove();
$(".mw-search-result-heading").children().filter(':first-child').before('* [[').after(']]');

Or to remove instances of mw-search-result-heading which contain searchalttitle you can use .has():

$(".mw-search-result-heading").has(".searchalttitle").remove();
$(".mw-search-result-heading").children().before('* [[').after(']]');

Which can also be written slightly more succinctly like so:

$(".mw-search-result-heading").has(".searchalttitle").remove().end().children().before('* [[').after(']]');

Note that you can use .hide() instead of .remove() if you want to be able to show those elements again at some point. - Evad37 [talk] 02:52, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Wow. You make it looks so easy. So, you chain methods to a selector. Nice. That sure is convenient. jQuery is simpler than I thought. When you chain methods to a class, they work on all the elements of that class. I was doing that with hide, but was just copying the examples and didn't really grasp the underlying structure. Thank you. And on retrospect, with loops and regex, it looks like I was trying to conduct surgery with an icecream scoop. :)

I try to follow along in the documentation during these discussions, so that I can grasp the jargon. While doing so, I noticed this:

$(".searchalttitle").remove();
$(".mw-search-result-heading").children().filter(':first-child').before('* [[').after(']]');

can be refactored to this:

$(".searchalttitle").remove();
$(".mw-search-result-heading").children(':first-child').before('* [[').after(']]');

It seems to work!

The script is now operational, thanks to you. But, I came across an unforeseen obstacle. The results look great on the search results page, but when you copy and paste them into an edit page, there is a blank line between all the entries. That requires that the user regex them all out in WikEd. I'd like to eliminate that manual operation by removing the blank lines in the search results.

Also, when we remove the .mw-search-result-heading entries that contain .searchalttitle, additional blank lines are left behind. Is that a clue that can help us track those newlines (\n) down?

It is not apparent where the newlines are inserted in the page source for the search results page. So, I assume they are specified on a style sheet somewhere. What is the most effective way to hunt down the style sheet which defines a particular class used on a Wikipedia page? The Transhumanist 21:24, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

It all seems to be very much browser dependent. Chrome gives me the expected result:

Extended content
There is a page named "Genre" on Wikipedia * [[Genre]] * [[Yuri (genre)]] * [[Film genre]] * [[Literary genre]] * [[Harem (genre)]] * [[Genre studies]] * [[Music genre]] * [[Western (genre)]] * [[Bara (genre)]] * [[Genre fiction]] * [[Biblical genre]] * [[Epic (genre)]] * [[Genre art]] * [[Thriller (genre)]]

Firefox adds spaces at the start of each line:

Extended content
There is a page named "Genre" on Wikipedia * [[Genre]] * [[Yuri (genre)]] * [[Film genre]] * [[Literary genre]] * [[Harem (genre)]] * [[Genre studies]] * [[Music genre]] * [[Bara (genre)]] * [[Western (genre)]] * [[Genre fiction]] * [[Biblical genre]] * [[Epic (genre)]] * [[Genre art]] * [[Thriller (genre)]]

IE adds several newlines between each item:

Extended content
There is a page named "Genre" on Wikipedia * [[Genre]] * [[Yuri (genre)]] * [[Film genre]] * [[Harem (genre)]] * [[Literary genre]] * [[Genre studies]] * [[Music genre]] * [[Bara (genre)]] * [[Western (genre)]] * [[Genre fiction]] * [[Biblical genre]] * [[Epic (genre)]] * [[Thriller (genre)]] * [[Genre art]]

That's all on windows 7. And you're presumably using some other browser/OS combination. Not really sure what the solution is though. - Evad37 [talk] 03:28, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Since the removed items each leave behind a newline, my guess is that it's one newline per div. But what div? There is other formatting there, including alternating background colors, and a solid border between entries. If I can remove the divs that the removed entries were in, that might get rid of some of the extraneous new lines. The rest I won't know until I get a look at the style sheets. But I can't find the style sheets. Is there a way to trace a class back to the style sheet it is defined on? The Transhumanist 04:54, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

I got rid of the blank lines for the removed items by changing one of your lines of code to this:

// nuke "li" instead of ".mw-search-result-heading"
$("li").has(".searchalttitle").remove();

I'm wondering why the double spacing (extra newline) between list items doesn't show up in the page source. In WikEd, newline characters ("\n") are invisible, but its regex feature finds/replaces them anyways. Maybe the same concept can be applied. The Transhumanist 05:40, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

I tried this to get rid of each \n, and it didn't work:

var str = $(".mw-search-results").html();
var regex = /\n/gi;
$(".mw-search-results").html(str.replace(regex, ""));

But then I tried it on \s instead, and it got rid of the extra linefeeds (along with all other white space, turning the entries to mush -- separated list items of mush! This shows that the extraneous linefeeds are potentially specifically accessible.). Any ideas? The Transhumanist 08:35, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Tracing styles: A lot of browsers have Web development tools ("dev tools" or "inspectors" or similar) that can show what styles an element currently has, and where they come from (e.g. in Chrome you can right-click on an area you're interested in and select Inspect).

Regex: \s is equivalent to [\r\n\t\f\v ], so one of those should work. There are various regex-testing website you could use to test, analyse, explain, and experiment with regex patterns – I use https://regex101.com/ (just need to make sure the 'flavor' is javascript), but there are others out there.

I'm wondering why the double spacing (extra newline) between list items doesn't show up in the page source. – Since I didn't have the problem with Chrome on Win 7, and FF/IE had different problems to what you're describing, I think its basically down to either browser bugs (or "features") – possibly MediaWiki is serving up (or the JavaScript modification is making) non-standard/non-compliant code, and the browsers have to decide for themselves how to handle it (thus some insert phantom spaces, others don't). - Evad37 [talk] 13:21, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Fixing the doublesspacing problem, and sorting it too

User:The Transhumanist/StripSearchInWikicode.js – the recent script you helped me on, which strips WP search results down to a bare list of links, and inserts wikilink formatting for ease of insertion of those links into lists. This is useful for gathering links for outlines. It still has the interlaced CR/LFs problem. Aside from that, I'd like this script to sort its results. So, if you know how, or know someone who knows how, please let me know.

The Transhumanist, I've had a thought on how to fix the stripsearch script: What it should do is make an array containing the search result titles - which can be sorted and otherwise manipulated using standard array methods - and then remove all the search result stuff, and rebuild the links from the array in the format you want. jQuery's .map() or .get() functions should be able to make the array. - Evad37 [talk] 00:34, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the guidance. How would you "rebuld the links from the array"? The Transhumanist 02:19, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

You can make links from page titles using code like I've got in User:Evad37/extra.js's makeLink function. But in your case you need to also surround the link with *[[ and ]], and have the whole thing within a block tag like <div> or <p>. Do that for each item in the array, and then you can add them all to (or next to) an element on the page using a jQuery method like .before(), .after(), .prepend(), or .append(), each of which can take an array as the input. - Evad37 [talk] 02:40, 27 October 2017 (UTC)