API:Options

This page is part of the MediaWiki API documentation.

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MediaWiki API

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MediaWiki version:

1.20

Token

To change options, an options token is required. Options tokens can be obtained via action=tokens with type=options (MW 1.20+), or by using the following method:

Obtaining an options token

api.php?action=tokens&type=options

Changing options

Options can be changed using action=options.

While this API is primarily intended for changing options which are registered by MediaWiki core or extensions and available on Special:Preferences, since Gerrit #I5f9ba5 you can also use it to set arbitrary user options that can be used by user-scripts or external editors.

These arbitrary options have three limits imposed on them:

• the key must start with the prefix userjs-
• the length of the key must not be more than 255 bytes
• the key must consist only of ASCII letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, _, -)

There are currently no hard limits on the length or contents of the value, nor is there a limit on the number of user options you can set at once. You can even store a complex tree of data within a user option by encoding it as a JSON string.

Parameters

• token: The token obtained in the previous request. Take care to urlencode the trailing +\ as %2B%5C.
• reset: Resets all preferences to the site defaults.
• change: Pipe-separated list of changes, formatted name=value (e.g. skin=vector), value cannot contain pipe characters. Providing only names of options without equal sign (e.g. hideminor|skin) results in resetting them.
• optionname: A name of a option which should have an optionvalue set.
• optionvalue: A value of the option specified by the optionname, can contain pipe characters.

The change parameter cannot be used to set a value which contains a pipe character "|", as it is used by the API to separate options. If you need to set such a value (for example, a user signature) use an optionname & optionvalue pair.

Example

Note: In this example, all parameters are passed in a GET request for the sake of simplicity. However, action=options requires POST requests; GET requests will cause an error. Changing a single option

api.php?action=options&token=58b54e0bab4a1d3fd3f7653af38e75cb%2B\&change=hideminor=1

Resetting all options and changing a single option

api.php?action=options&token=58b54e0bab4a1d3fd3f7653af38e75cb%2B\&reset&change=hideminor=1

Changing three options

api.php?action=options&token=58b54e0bab4a1d3fd3f7653af38e75cb%2B\&change=hideminor=1|skin=vector&optionname=nickname&optionvalue=custom-signa|ture

Possible errors

In addition to the usual stuff:

• code: notloggedin
  • info: Anonymous users cannot change preferences
• code: nochanges
  • info: No changes were requested

See also

• API:Meta#userinfo / ui for reading existing options.