Persistent Page Identifiers
Stable unique identifiers for your wiki pages
Reference your pages with UUIDs or PURIs
On this page
Overview Usage documentation Installation Configuration
External links
Persistent Page Identifiers for MediaWiki
Reference your wiki pages with stable, unique identifiers that remain unchanged even when pages are renamed, moved, or deleted and restored.
Each page automatically receives a unique persistent ID upon creation.
The extension generates UUID v7 IDs. Future versions might add support for other ID types, such as nanoid-style IDs. UUIDs (Universally Unique Identifiers) are 128-bit numbers represented as 32 hexadecimal digits separated by hyphens. Example: 123e4567-e89b-12d3-a456-426614174000
You can access the identifiers via the page information tab (?action=info),
parser functions,
and the REST API.
Persistent Page Identifiers can be used together with both Semantic MediaWiki and Wikibase.
It is possible to configure how your IDs are displayed.
Usage documentation
Parser Function
To display a page's persistent identifier within the page content, use the parser function
{{#ppid:}}
.
API
Get persistent identifiers via the REST API by MediaWiki page ID:
GET /persistent-page-identifiers/v1/pages?ids=123|456
{
"identifiers": {
"123": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000042",
"456": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000043"
}
}
Generate IDs for Existing Pages
For wikis with existing pages that were created before installing this extension, you can generate persistent identifiers using the maintenance script:
php maintenance/GenerateMissingIdentifiers.phpThe script will only generate identifiers for pages that don't already have one, processing them in batches for optimal performance.
Installation
Platform requirements:
- PHP 8.1 or later
- MediaWiki 1.39 or later
Install the extension using Composer:
COMPOSER=composer.local.json composer require --no-update professional-wiki/persistent-page-identifiers:~1.0
composer update professional-wiki/persistent-page-identifiers --no-dev -o
Enable the extension by adding the following to your LocalSettings.php:
wfLoadExtension( 'PersistentPageIdentifiers' );Run the MediaWiki update.php script:
php maintenance/update.phpYou can verify the installation by checking your wiki's Special:Version page.
If you already have wiki pages, you probably want to generate IDs for them.
Configuration
Persistent Page Identifiers only has optional configuration. Change configuration via LocalSettings.php.
Persistent Identifier Format
This format affects how identifiers are displayed everywhere in the extension, including the page information tab, parser function output, and API responses.
$wgPersistentPageIdentifiersFormat = '$1'; // Default value
// Becomes something like 123e4567-e89b-12d3-a456-426614174000
The
$1
placeholder is replaced with the persistent ID.
Example usage:
-
PURIs (Persistent Uniform Resource Identifiers):
$wgPersistentPageIdentifiersFormat = 'https://example.com/id/$1'; // Becomes something like https://example.com/id/123e4567-e89b-12d3-a456-426614174000 -
Add a prefix or suffix:
$wgPersistentPageIdentifiersFormat = 'wiki_$1'; // Becomes something like wiki_123e4567-e89b-12d3-a456-426614174000
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