Manual:watchlist table

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MediaWiki database layout

watchlist table

The watchlist table for each registered user contains his or her id and for all the pages the user watches, the namespace number, the page title without namespace, and a notification timestamp, used for page change notification.

Note: MediaWiki works with the assumption that when people watch pages they either watch both the talk page and the normal page, or neither. That means that for each watched page MediaWiki always automatically adds two entries: One for the page and one for its talk page. E.g. when the user watches the Main Page, then there will be two rows in the database table: One for the Main Page in namespace 0 and one for the Main Page in namespace 1 (which is the according talk page). Missing page rows are added by the maintenance script update.php.

Fields

wl_user

This is the key to user.user_id.

wl_namespace

This is the key to page_namespace.

wl_title

This is the key to page_title.

wl_notificationtimestamp

MediaWiki version:

≥ 1.4

This is the timestamp when the user was last sent a notification email; it is cleared when the user visits the page.

Schema summary

(Current as of v1.23.)

MediaWiki version:

≥ 1.19

"DESCRIBE watchlist;" in version 1.19 gives the following:

mysql> DESCRIBE mw_watchlist;
+--------------------------+------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field                    | Type             | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+--------------------------+------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| wl_user                  | int(10) unsigned | NO   | PRI | NULL    |       |
| wl_namespace             | int(11)          | NO   | PRI | 0       |       |
| wl_title                 | varbinary(255)   | NO   | PRI |         |       |
| wl_notificationtimestamp | varbinary(14)    | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
+--------------------------+------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)

MediaWiki version:

1.9

mysql> describe watchlist;
+--------------------------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field                    | Type            | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+--------------------------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| wl_user                  | int(5) unsigned | NO   | PRI | NULL    |       |
| wl_namespace             | int(11)         | NO   | PRI | 0       |       |
| wl_title                 | varchar(255)    | NO   | PRI | NULL    |       |
| wl_notificationtimestamp | varchar(14)     | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
+--------------------------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
4 rows in set (0.01 sec)

MediaWiki version:

1.8

"DESCRIBE watchlist;" in version 1.8 gives the following:

+--------------------------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field                    | Type            | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+--------------------------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| wl_user                  | int(5) unsigned | NO   | PRI | NULL    |       |
| wl_namespace             | int(11)         | NO   | PRI | 0       |       |
| wl_title                 | varchar(255)    | NO   | PRI | NULL    |       |
| wl_notificationtimestamp | varchar(14)     | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
+--------------------------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+

MediaWiki version:

1.5

"DESCRIBE watchlist;" in version 1.5 gives the following:

+--------------------------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field                    | Type            | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+--------------------------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| wl_user                  | int(5) unsigned | NO   | PRI |         |       |
| wl_namespace             | int(11)         | NO   | PRI | 0       |       |
| wl_title                 | varchar(255)    | NO   | PRI |         |       |
| wl_notificationtimestamp | varchar(14)     | NO   |     | 0       |       |
+--------------------------+-----------------+------+-----+---------+-------+

MediaWiki version:

1.4

"DESCRIBE watchlist;" in version 1.4 gives the following:

+------------------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field            | Type                | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+------------------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| wl_user          | int(5) unsigned     |      |     |         |                |
| wl_namespace     | tinyint(2) unsigned |      |     |    0    |                |
| wl_title         | varchar(255) binary |      |     |    ''   |                |
+------------------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+

Some of this information was adapted from schema.doc in the MediaWiki docs/ directory.

Databases

Engines: MySQL – Oracle – PostgreSQL – SQLite Technical documentation: Schema (tables) – API property associations – Field prefixes – Primary key storage in other fields – Wikimedia extension tables Configuration: Settings – Sharing Development: Access – Optimization – Policy – Updater – Extension schema updates – Patch file Core tables: archive – category – categorylinks – change_tag – config – externallinks – filearchive – hitcounter – image – imagelinks – interwiki – iwlinks – ipblocks – job – l10n_cache – langlinks – logging – log_search – msg_resource – msg_resource_links – module_deps – objectcache – oldimage – page – pagelinks – page_props – page_restrictions – protected_titles – querycache – querycachetwo – querycache_info – recentchanges – redirect – revision – searchindex – sites – site_stats – tag_summary – templatelinks – text – transcache – updatelog – uploadstash – user – user_former_groups – user_groups – user_newtalk – user_properties – valid_tag – watchlist