Javascript in MediaWiki

Question

I'd like to use some Javascript on my wiki pages, but I haven't been able to figure out how. I'm using a hosted solution on Wikia. So I am unable to modify the installation, add extensions or hack the settings. But I have admin rights on my wiki so I can access the MediaWiki namespace and MediaWiki:Common.js.

The javascript I want to use (Tangle) will consist of an external script that will be common to a number of pages(but not all pages in the wiki) and some code that will be specific to each page, the kind you would normally put inline in the <script> tag.

The trouble is, Mediawiki sanitizes <script> tags, and I haven't been able to find a way to put them in. I'm trying to make this into an editor-friendly setup that will be used across the wiki, so I'm also trying to avoid hacks and find a proper solution.

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Update: New problem

Apparently MediaWiki also sanitizes the HTML5 data attributes, which Tangle relies on heavily. Any ideas on solving that problem is very welcome.

Answer 1

MediaWiki doesn't allow <script> tags in pages for obvious reasons: if it did, anyone could use them to inject JavaScript into your wiki and e.g. steal login credentials.

There are a couple of things you could do:

• Write some generic JavaScript code to extract the parameters from something that is allowed on MediaWiki pages, such as a hidden <div>. Be careful not to introduce security holes when doing that.

• Add something like this to MediaWiki:Common.js:

  importScript('MediaWiki:Tangle/' + wgPageName + '.js');
  

  Then, whenever a user visits the page "Foo", the page "MediaWiki:Tangle/Foo.js" will be loaded as JavaScript. Of course, that page will only be editable by admins, but that might still be enough for your needs. (You could use the same trick to import JS from pages in other namespaces, but that would open a security hole miles wide.)