Help:Magic words

Magic words are strings of text that MediaWiki associates with a return value or function, such as time, site details, or page names. This page is about usage of standard magic words; for a technical reference, see [Manual:Magic words] .

There are three general types of magic words:

• Behavior switches: these are uppercase words surrounded by double underscores (eg __FOO__)
• Variables: these are uppercase words surrounded by double braces (eg <tt>{{FOO}}</tt>). As such, they look a lot like templates
• Parser functions: these take parameters and are either of the form <tt>{{foo:...}}</tt> or <tt>{{#foo:...}}</tt>.

Page-dependent magic words will affect or return data about the current page, even if the word is added through a transcluded template or included system message.

Behaviour switches

A behaviour switch controls the layout or behaviour of the page and can often be used to specify desired omissions and inclusions in the content.

Word	Description	Versions
Table of contents
__NOTOC__	Hides the table of contents (TOC).
__FORCETOC__	Forces the table of content to appear at its normal position (above the first header).
__TOC__	Places a table of contents at the word's current position (overriding __NOTOC__). If this is used multiple times, the table of contents will appear at the first word's position.
Editing
__NOEDITSECTION__	Hides the section edit links beside headings.
__NEWSECTIONLINK__	Adds a link (("+" by default) beside the "edit" tab for adding a new section on a non-talk page (see [m:Help:Section#Adding a section at the end] ).	1.7+
Categories
__NOGALLERY__	Used on a category page, replaces thumbnails in the category view with normal links.	1.7+
__HIDDENCAT__	Used on a category page, hides the category from the lists of categories in its members and parent categories (there is an option in the user preferences to show them).	1.13+
Language conversion
__NOCONTENTCONVERT__ __NOCC__	On wikis with language variants, don't perform any content language conversion (character and phase) in article display; for example, only show Chinese (zh) instead of variants like zh_cn, zh_tw, zh_sg, or zh_hk.
__NOTITLECONVERT__ __NOTC__	On wikis with language variants, don't perform language conversion on the title (all other content is converted).
Other
__START__	No effect.
__END__	Explicitly marks the end of the article, to prevent MediaWiki from removing trailing whitespace. Removed in [rev:19213] .
__INDEX__	Tell search engines to index the page (overrides [Manual:$wgArticleRobotPolicies] , but not robots.txt).	1.13+
__NOINDEX__	Tell search engines not to index the page (ie, do not list in search engines' results).	[rev:37973]
__STATICREDIRECT__	On redirect pages, don't allow MediaWiki to automatically update the link when someone moves a page and checks "Update any redirects that point to the original title".	[rev:37928]

Variables

Variables return information about the current page, wiki, or date. Their syntax is similar to templates. If a template name conflicts with a variable, the variable will be used (so to transclude the template Template:PAGENAME you would need to write {{Template:PAGENAME}}). In some cases, adding parameters will force the parser to treat a variable as a template; for example, {{CURRENTDAYNAME|x}} transcludes Template:CURRENTDAYNAME.

Date & time

The following variables return the current date and time according to the user's timezone preferences, defaulting to the UTC timezone.

Due to MediaWiki and browser caching, these variables frequently show when the page was cached rather than the current time.

Variable	Output	Description	Versions
Year
{{CURRENTYEAR}}	2024	Year
Month
{{CURRENTMONTH}}	04	Month (zero-padded number)
{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}	April	Month (name)
{{CURRENTMONTHNAMEGEN}}	April	Month (genitive form)
{{CURRENTMONTHABBREV}}	Apr	Month (abbreviation)	1.5+
Day
{{CURRENTDAY}}	27	Day of the month (unpadded number)
{{CURRENTDAY2}}	27	Day of the month (zero-padded number)	1.6+
{{CURRENTDOW}}	6	Day of the week (unpadded number)
{{CURRENTDAYNAME}}	Saturday	Day of the week (name)
Time
{{CURRENTTIME}}	19:01	Time (24-hour HH:mm format)
{{CURRENTHOUR}}	19	Hour (24-hour zero-padded number)
Other
{{CURRENTWEEK}}	17	Week (number)

The following variables do the same as the above, but using the site's local timezone instead of user preferences and UTC:

• {{LOCALYEAR}}
• {{LOCALMONTH}}
• {{LOCALMONTHNAME}}
• {{LOCALMONTHNAMEGEN}}
• {{LOCALMONTHABBREV}}
• {{LOCALDAY}}
• {{LOCALDAY2}}
• {{LOCALDOW}}
• {{LOCALDAYNAME}}
• {{LOCALTIME}}
• {{LOCALHOUR}}
• {{LOCALWEEK}}

Technical metadata

Revision variables return data about the latest edit to the current page, even if viewing an older version of the page.

Variable	Output	Description	Versions
Site
{{SITENAME}}	CityDeepSky	The wiki's site name ([Manual:$wgSitename] ).
{{SERVER}}	http://www.citydeepsky.com	domain URL ([Manual:$wgServer] )
{{SERVERNAME}}	www.citydeepsky.com	domain name ([Manual:$wgServerName] )
{{SCRIPTPATH}}	/wiki	relative script path ([Manual:$wgScriptPath] )
Latest revision to current page
{{REVISIONID}}	2129	Unique ID	1.5+

Statistics

Numbers returned by these variables normally contain separators (commas or spaces, depending on the local language), but can return raw numbers with the ":R" flag (for example, {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} → 256 and {{NUMBEROFARTICLES:R}} → 256). Use "|R" for magic words that require a parameter like PAGESINCATEGORY (for example {{PAGESINCATEGORY:Help}} and {{PAGESINCATEGORY:Help|R}}).

Variable	Output	Description	Versions
Entire wiki
{{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}	256	Number of pages in main namespace.
{{NUMBEROFFILES}}	289	Number of uploaded files.	1.5+

Page names

Variable	Output	Description	Versions
{{FULLPAGENAME}}	Help:Magic words	Namespace and page title.	1.6+
{{PAGENAME}}	Magic words	Page title.
{{SUBPAGENAME}}	Magic words	The subpage title ("foo" on "Title/foo").	1.6+

The following are URL-encoded equivalents:

• {{FULLPAGENAMEE}}
• {{PAGENAMEE}}
• {{SUBPAGENAMEE}}

Namespaces

Variable	Output	Description	Versions
{{NAMESPACE}}	Help	Namespace (name)

The following are URL-encoded equivalents:

• {{NAMESPACEE}}

Parser functions

Parser functions are very similar to variables, but operate on user input instead of the current page.

This page only describes parser functions that are integral to the MediaWiki software. Other parser functions may be added by MediaWiki extensions such as the [Extension:ParserFunctions] .

URL data

Variable	Output	Description	Versions
{{localurl:page name}} {{localurl:page name|query string}}	/wiki/index.php/Page_name /wiki/index.php?title=Page_name&query string	relative path to title
{{fullurl:page name}} {{fullurl:page name|query_string}}	http://www.citydeepsky.com/wiki/index.php/Page_name http://www.citydeepsky.com/wiki/index.php?title=Page_name&query_string	absolute path to title	1.5+

Namespaces

{{ns:}} returns the localized name for the namespace with that index.

Usage	Output	Usage	Output
{{ns:-2}} or {{ns:Media}}	Media	{{ns:-1}} or {{ns:Special}}	Special
{{ns:0}}		{{ns:1}} or {{ns:Talk}}	Talk
{{ns:2}} or {{ns:User}}	User	{{ns:3}} or {{ns:User_talk}}	User talk
{{ns:4}} or {{ns:Project}}	CityDeepSky	{{ns:5}} or {{ns:Project_talk}}	CityDeepSky talk
{{ns:6}} or {{ns:File}} or {{ns:Image}}	File	{{ns:7}} or {{ns:File_talk}} or {{ns:Image_talk}}	File talk
{{ns:8}} or {{ns:MediaWiki}}	MediaWiki	{{ns:9}} or {{ns:MediaWiki_talk}}	MediaWiki talk
{{ns:10}} or {{ns:Template}}	Template	{{ns:11}} or {{ns:Template_talk}}	Template talk
{{ns:12}} or {{ns:Help}}	Help	{{ns:13}} or {{ns:Help_talk}}	Help talk
{{ns:14}} or {{ns:Category}}	Category	{{ns:15}} or {{ns:Category_talk}}	Category talk

Formatting

Usage	Output	Description	Version
{{lc:string}}	xyz	The lowercase input.	1.5+
{{lcfirst:string}}	xYZ	The input with the first character lowercase.	1.5+
{{uc:string}}	XYZ	The uppercase input.	1.5+
{{ucfirst:string}}	Xyz	The input with the first character uppercase.	1.5+
{{plural:2|is|are}}	are	Outputs the correct given pluralization form (parameters except first) depending on the count (first parameter). Plural transformations are used for languages like Russian based on "count mod 10".