Help:DPL

Manual

DynamicPageList3 (DPL/DPL3) is a powerful MediaWiki extension that can generate lists of pages, and/or certain data and statistics gathered from them, for display in a wiki page. DPL lists are automatically updated whenever said data changes.

As a basic example, DPL can be used to insert, in a wiki page, an always-current list of all pages of a particular category. The data displayed may be selected and sorted based on factors like author, namespace, date, name pattern, usage of templates, or references to other articles, with a variety of custom formatting possibilities.

This page and its subpages are the DynamicPageList3 (DPL) Manual. This version of the DPL Manual was imported from the Gamepedia Help Wiki (which apparently adapted it from FollowTheScore). The DPL Manual on the Gamepedia Help Wiki has since migrated to the Fandom Community Central. Because of needed changes, the pages imported have been edited. For a list of all changes, see AIOWiki:DPL Manual.

Usage

General usage and invocation syntax

Primary DPL module

These sections contain documentation on DPL's primary module, {{#dpl: ... }}. This is the DPL functionality used most often, and has a wide range of powerful coding options.

Complete DPL Manual Table of Contents

Below is the legacy Table of Contents provided as navigation in the original DPL documentation. It is an expansive, cross-referenced list of DPL parameters (which some find daunting and others find helpful). Its links can all be found via the pages listed above, however the table below may be useful to more easily find what you need, especially if you don't know which section your desired functionality might be located in (expand the table below and use your browser's Find In Page feature, usually Ctrl-F).

Click to reveal or hide legacy DPL Manual Table of Contents

Criteria for page selection

name	purpose
category	Select articles based on categories. You can specify more than one category with the pipe '`\|`' as a separator, with the effect that the pages listed have to be at least in one of the categories (logical OR). If you specify the 'category=' parameter more than once, the pages listed have to match all these parameters (logical AND).
categorymatch	Select articles based on categories. You can specify one or more patterns (SQL LIKE); a page will be selected if at least one of its categories matches at least one of the patterns.
categoryregexp	select pages with a category matching a regular expression
notcategory	Much like the category parameter, but requires that every page listed not be in a particular category. Unlike in 'category' you cannot combine several categories using logical OR in this parameter.
notcategorymatch	Works like notcategory but based on SQL LIKE
notcategoryregexp	Works like notcategory but based on SQL REGEXP
categoriesminmax	To restrict the search to articles which are assigned to at least [min] and at most to [max] categories.
namespace	To restrict the articles in the list to only be in one of the given namespaces.
notnamespace	Much like the notcategory parameter, but for namespaces. Requires that every page listed not be in one of given namespaces.
linksfrom	Selects articles which are referenced from at least one of the specified pages.
openreferences	extends the 'linksfrom' to unresolved references.
notlinksfrom	Selects articles which are NOT referenced from any of the specified pages.
linksto	Selects articles which link to at least one of the specified pages.
notlinksto	Selects articles which do NOT link to any of the specified pages.
linkstoexternal	Selects articles which contain an external link that matches a given text pattern.
imageused	Selects articles which use a certain image
imagecontainer	Select images which are contained in one or more articles
uses	Selects articles which use (transclude) at least one of the specified templates (wiki syntax: `{{...}}`).
notuses	Selects articles which do not use any of the specified template.
usedby	Selects articles (templates) which are used (included) by a specified page.
createdby	Selects articles which were created by the specified user. Warning: This keyword can produce very slow and inefficient queries on your MediaWiki system, potentially impacting performance for all users.
notcreatedby	Selects articles which were NOT created by the specified user. Warning: This keyword can produce very slow and inefficient queries on your MediaWiki system, potentially impacting performance for all users.
modifiedby	Selects articles which were created or at least once modified by the specified user.
notmodifiedby	Selects articles which were NOT (created or) modified by the specified user.
lastmodifiedby	Selects articles where the last modification was done by the specified user.
notlastmodifiedby	Selects articles where the last modification was NOT done by the specified user.
title	Select one single page by its (namespace and) title.
titlelt	Restrict the selection to pages with a title less or equal to a given value.
titlegt	Restrict the selection to pages with a title greater or equal to a given value.
titlematch	Select pages with a title matching at least one of the specified patterns. The patterns are used as a `LIKE` argument in an SQL query. Namespaces are ignored as the `namespace` parameter can be used to further narrow the selection.
titleregexp	Select pages with a title matching the specified regular expressions. The pattern will be used as a REGEXP argument in a SQL query. Namespaces are ignored as the namespace= parameter can be used to further narrow the selection.
nottitlematch	Select pages with a title NOT matching any of the specified patterns. The patterns are used as a LIKE argument in a SQL query. Namespaces are ignored as the namespace= parameter can be used to further narrow the selection. Normally you would want to use this selection only in combination with other criteria. Otherwise output could become huge.
nottitleregexp	Select pages with a title that does NOT match the specified regular expression. The expression will be used as a REGEXP argument in a SQL query. Namespaces are ignored as the namespace= parameter can be used to further narrow the selection. Normally you would want to use this selection only in combination with other criteria. Otherwise output could become huge.
includematch	Controls the selection of pages based on contents which shall be included from these pages.
includematchparsed	Controls the selection of pages based on (pre-parsed) contents which shall be included from these pages.
includenotmatch	Controls the selection of pages based on contents which shall be included from these pages.
includenotmatchparsed	Controls the selection of pages based on (pre-parsed) contents which shall be included from these pages.
lastrevisionbefore	shows only articles which existed before the specified date. The date of the last revision before that date will be shown (and will be available as in mode=userformat).
firstrevisionsince	The date of the first revision after the specified date will be shown (and will be available as in mode=userformat).
allrevisionsbefore	shows all revisions which existed before the specified date. The date of each revision will be shown (and will be available as in mode=userformat).
allrevisionssince	shows all revisions which were created after the specified date. The date of each revision will be shown (and will be available as in mode=userformat). If there was no new revision of an existing article after the specified date that article will not appear in the output.
maxrevisions	show a page (or its revisions) only if there do not exist more than a given number of revisions for that page.
minrevisions	show a page (or its revisions) only if there exist at least a given number of revisions for that page.
articlecategory	select a talk page based on a category to which the corresponding base article (in the default namespace) belongs.
includesubpages	Controls the inclusion or exclusion of pages which have a '/' in their name. Default is `true`.
redirects	Controls the inclusion or exclusion of redirect pages in the output. By default redirections are NOT shown.
minoredits	Control the inclusion or exlusion of minor edits in lists.
stablepages	Control the inclusion or exclusion of pages which are flagged as 'stable'
qualitypages	Control the inclusion or exclusion of pages which are flagged as 'quality pages'
skipthispage	include the page containing the DPL query into the result set
count	Controls the number of results that are shown.
scroll	activate result scrolling
offset	show only a portion of a big result list; typically used in combination with "count="
randomcount	create the complete result set and then select a subset for display by random.
randomseed	set an initial value for the random generator
distinct	allow / suppresses duplicates in the output
ignorecase	make comparisons insensitive to case

Controlling output order

name	purpose
ordermethod	Determines what criterion (resp. criteria) is (resp. are) used to order the list.
order	Controls the sort direction of the list.
ordercollation	Allow individual collations, make case insensitive sorting possible

Controlling output format

name	purpose
mode	Provide basic control over the output of DPL.
inlinetext	To define the inline text used in mode=inline.
listseparators	(alias for format) see the format parameter. Implicitly sets mode=userformat.
format	customize the output format completely. Implicitly sets mode=userformat. Uses variable references like Help:DPL/Parameters: Controlling output format to describe the output format. See also the secseparators parameter.
secseparators	customize the output format of included sections. Can be used with standard output modes and with mode=userformat.
multisecseparators	put a tag between multiple transcluded parts which refer to the same template or chapter.
dominantsection	define a section with multiple occurrences as dominant, i.e. each piece of contents of this section (which is associated with a template call or a chapter within the original document) will create a separate output line.
table	a simple syntax to create standard tabular output; see also tablerow
tablerow	a simple syntax to create customized tabular output; see also table
tablesortcol	define a column to be used as sort key (see also table )
headingmode	To control the output of the headings in a DPL with complex/multi-parameter ordermethod. (No effect with single-param ordermethods.) For ordermethod=method1,method2,..., method1 is used for headings. E.g. headingmode affects category headings in ordermethod=category,title (2-param ordermethod). See also headingcount
headingcount	In combination with headingmode this parameter decides whether we show a text line with the number of articles per group or not.
listattr	Adds attributes to HTML list elements, depending on mode (HTML element is ol for ordered, ul for unordered, div for others). Can be used with pseudo mode=inline where inline text contains one or more <br/>. Only applicable to mode=ordered or mode=unordered. Not applicable to mode=category or mode=inline (with no <br/> in inline text).
itemattr	Adds attributes to HTML list items, depending on mode (element is li for ordered/unordered, span for others). Not applicable to mode=category.
hlistattr	Adds attributes to the HTML list element at the heading/top level, depending on headingmode (HTML element would be ol for ordered, ul for unordered, dl for definition, div for others) Not yet applicable to headingmode=none.
hitemattr	Adds attributes to HTML list items (headings) at the heading level, depending on headingmode (HTML element would be li for ordered/unordered, div for others). To be used with headingmode='unordered' or 'ordered'. (Not yet applicable for others.)
userdateformat	Define a special layout for date formatting.
shownamespace	To restrict the appearance of the namespace name of a page before the page. As the switch is true by default it should be set to false if you want to avoid namespaces to be shown in the output.
escapelinks	Regarding images and categories this parameter allows you to decide whether you want to see a link to the image or to the category page (escapelinks=true, this is the default) you want to see the image or make the page which contains the DPL statement part of the categories which are returned by DPL (escapelinks=false)
titlemaxlength	To limit the number of characters of the title to display. If the page title (this does not include the namespace or any other prefix before the title) is bigger than the titlemaxlength value, the title is truncated and ended by '...'.
replaceintitle	execute a string replacement operation on the Controlling output format var
columns	Define a column layout for the output.
rows	Define a row layout for the output. A "row" is a group of output lines for which the heading is repeated. If you do not know how big your result will be, it may be better to use the rowsize parameter.
rowsize	Define a row layout for the output. A "row" is a group of n output lines for which the heading will be repeated.
rowcolformat	Defines layout properties (using HTML table tag parameters) for the row/column grid.

Controlling output volume

name	purpose
resultsheader	output a headline if there is at least one article to display.
resultsfooter	output a summary 'footline' if there is at least one article to display.
oneresultheader	output a headline if there is exactly one article to display.
oneresultfooter	output a footline if there is exactly one article to display.
noresultsheader	output a headline if there is no article to display (empty result).
suppresserrors	suppress the warning message if no matching article was found.
noresultsfooter	output a footline if there is no article to display (empty result).
addcategories	Shows all categories to which an article belongs as a small text line after the article name.
addpagecounter	Shows number of times the page has been viewed according to the definition of the 'page_counter' field on Page_table.
addpagesize	Shows the size of the page.
addcontribution	shows how much a user contributed to an article.
adduser	Requires ordermethod=[...,]firstedit or ordermethod=[...,]lastedit (where the [...,] signifies a complex ordermethod with extra parameters). If firstedit (lastedit), 'adduser=true' displays the user who made the first (last) revision of the page. In this way the parameter is equivelent to the addauthor (addlasteditor) parameter (see below).
addauthor	show the user who created the article
addlasteditor	show the user who edited the most recent revision of a page
addpagetoucheddate	Shows date/time of last change to the page according to the definition of the 'page_touched' field on Page_table. Requires ordermethod=[...,]pagetouched or ordermethod=[...,]title. ([...,] means complex ordermethods with extra param before are allowed.)
addeditdate	Requires ordermethod=[...,]firstedit or ordermethod=[...,]lastedit. ([...,] means complex ordermethods with extra param before firstedit
addexternallink	add the URL of an external link to the output list.
addfirstcategorydate	Shows the date/time the article got added to one of the listed include categories. If there are more than one categories listed and an article belongs to more than one of them, the result is ambiguous. From a logical point of view it is recommended to include one category only with 'category' parameter or to make sure that each of the article in the result belongs to only one of the categories listed. Conflicts with other "add*date" (addeditdate, etc.) parameters to avoid confusion.
showcurid	page links will contain the current page id
include	include pages (whole content) or include certain sections of articles or template parameters. This functionality is based on the ideas and work of Steve Sanbeg and his extension Labeled Section Transclusion. DPL comes with a modified version of Sanbeg´s source, so there is no need for additional installation.
includepage	this can be used as a longer name for include.
includemaxlength	Delimit the size of an included article to a maximum of [n] characters of wiki source text or less. Care is taken to respect pairs of braces and brackets as far as possible. Otherwise we might confuse the result by half-cut syntax elements of transcluded sections. Therefore the output might be shorter or even larger than [n] characters.
includetrim	removes all leading and trailing whitespace from transcluded contents.

Other parameters

name	purpose
updaterules	define a set of rules which are executed to perform an update on selected articles (bulk update or template value editing)
deleterules	allow the mass deletion of wiki pages
goal	set the overall goal for DPL to either show pages (default) or categories these pages belong to
allowcachedresults	Cache query results to improve performance keep servers from crashing under high load.
reset	suppress references to pages, templates, images, categories in DPL output
fixcategory	assign the article containing a DPL statement to a category although `reset` was used.
eliminate	suppress references to pages, templates, images, categories in DPL output
debug	Sets debugging level.
execandexit	process the command given as an argument and then exit immediately.
cacheperiod	define the expiration period for the dplcache

Other DPL modules

These sections detail some additional functions provided by the DPL extension.

Notes

Examples

Selecting articles

Show article's context or contents

Controlling output