command line tools

Common Options

This section contains a description of options that are accepted by more than one command.

-h, --help

Show usage information and exit.

-c, --config=CONFIG

The value for this option describes the source of MediaWiki articles and images for the command and can be of one of the following types:

  • A “base URL” of a MediaWiki installation. A base URL is the URL up to, but not including the index.php/api.php part.

    This URL can differ from the prefix seen in “pretty” article URLs. For example the article Physics in the English Wikipedia has the URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics, but the base URL is http://en.wikipedia.org/w/.

    If you’ve set up your own MediaWiki you probably know what your base URL should be, but if you’re using a different MediaWiki, you can see the base URL if add a query string to the URL, e.g. by clicking on the edit link or by looking at an older revision of an article.

    This value for --config corresponds to type=mwapi in a configuration file (see docs/configfiles.txt), i.e. articles and images are fetched with the MediaWiki API. Specifying the URL directly as value for --config is usually the quicker way to achieve exactly the same result.

    This requires MediaWiki 1.11 or later.

  • A shortcut for a base URL. Currently there are the following shortcuts:

  • A filename of a ZIP file generated with the the mw-zip Command.

  • A filename of a configuration file (see docs/configfiles.txt).

-m, --metabook=METABOOK

Description of the article collection to be rendered in JSON format. This is used by the Collection extension to transfer this information to mw-serve which in turn passes the information to mw-render and mw-zip.

--collectionpage=COLLECTIONPAGE

Title of a saved article collection (using the Collection extension)

-x, --no-images

If given, no images are included in the output document.

-i, --imagesize=IMAGESIZE

Maximum size (which can be either width or height, whichever is greater) of images. If images exceed this maximum size, they’re scaled down.

-o, --output=OUTPUT

Write output to given file.

-l, --logfile=LOGFILE

Log output to the given file.

--login=USERNAME:PASSWORD[:DOMAIN]

For MediaWikis that restrict the viewing of pages, login with given USERNAME, PASSWORD and optionally DOMAIN.

Currently this is only supported for mwapidb, i.e. when the –config argument is a base URL or shortcut, or when type=mwapi in the configuration file.

--title

Specify a title for the article collection. This is e.g. used by some writers to produce a title page. This title overrides titles contained in ZIP files or metabook files.

--subtitle

Specify a subtitle for the article collection. This is e.g. used by some writers to produce a title page (note that subtitle might require a tilte). This subtitle overrides subtitles contained in ZIP files or metabook files.

The mw-render Command

Render MediaWiki articles to one of several output formats like PDF or OpenDocument Text.

Usage

mw-render [OPTIONS] [ARTICLETITLE...]

Specific Options

-w, --writer

Name of the writer to produce the output. The list of available writers can be seen with mw-render --list-writers.

--list-writers

List the available writers.

-W, --writer-options

Writer specific options in a “;” separated list (depending on your shell, quoting with “…” or ‘…’ might be needed). Each item in that list can either be a single option or an option=value pair. To list the available writer options use mw-render --writer-info WRITERNAME.

--writer-info=WRITER

Show available options and some additional information about the given writer.

-s, --status-file=STATUS_FILE

Write status/progress information in JSON format to this file. The file is continuously updated during the execution of mw-render.

-e, --error-file=ERROR_FILE

If an error occurs, write the error message to this file. If no error occurs this file is not written/created.

--keep-zip=FILENAME

Do not remove the (otherwise temporary) ZIP file, but save it under FILENAME.

The mw-zip Command

Generate a ZIP file containing

  • articles,
  • images,
  • templates and
  • additional meta information (especially if --metabook is given, see Common Options) like name and URL of the MediaWiki, licensing information and title, subtitle and the hierarchical structure of the article collection.

Usage

mw-zip [OPTIONS] [ARTICLETITLE...]

Specific Options

-p, --posturl=POSTURL

Upload the ZIP file with an HTTP POST request to the given URL.

-g , --getposturl

Retrieve the POSTURL from PediaPress and open the upload page in the web browser.

The mw-post Command

Send a ZIP file generated with the mw-zip command to a given or an automatically retrieved URL via HTTP POST request.

Usage

mw-post [OPTIONS]

Specific Options

-i, --input=INPUT

Filename of ZIP file.

-p, --posturl=POSTURL

Upload the ZIP file with an HTTP POST request to the given URL.

-g , --getposturl

Retrieve the POSTURL from PediaPress and open the upload page in the web browser.

The mw-serve-ctl command

--purge-cache=HOURS

Remove all cached files in –cache-dir that haven’t been touched for the last HOURS hours. This is meant to be run as a cron job.

--clean-up

Report errors for processes that have died irregularly.