Currently, EditPage contains the web UI tightly integrated with edit authorisation and edit conflict merging. ApiEditPage wraps EditPage by making a fake web UI request. And VisualEditor and LiquidThreads wrap ApiEditPage by making a second fake request.
I propose introducing a new backend containing edit authorisation, automatic conflict merging, and the call through to WikiPage::doEditContent(), separated from the web UI. EditPage, ApiEditPage, VisualEditor, SemanticForms and LiquidThreads would call this backend.
The interface would be similar to EditPage::internalAttemptSave(), except with relevant request state injected instead of being fetched from global or class static data. updateWatchlist() would be moved to the UI layer.
A code comment notes:
@todo FIXME: This interface is TERRIBLE, but hard to get rid of due to various error display idiosyncrasies. There are also lots of cases where error metadata is set in the object and retrieved later instead of being returned, e.g. AS_CONTENT_TOO_BIG and AS_BLOCKED_PAGE_FOR_USER. All that stuff needs to be cleaned up some
So we would try to fix that.
The rationale for this work is to encourage further development of editing customisations and extensions. It may be possible to make MCR editing (T107595) easier to implement.
Usage survey in WMF deployed extensions
SemanticForms (a.k.a. PageForms) creates an EditPage object in order to execute the backend EditPage::internalAttemptSave().
JsonConfig and LiquidThreads create an EditPage object in order to execute the combined frontend and backend EditPage::edit(), with hooks to customise its operation.
ProofreadPage subclasses EditPage in order to override the UI and content object creation.
VisualEditor, DiscussionTools, and LiquidThreads invoke ApiEditPage to perform an edit.
The following extensions hook the backend part of EditPage (EditFilter, EditFilterMergedContent, EditPage::attemptSave, EditPage::attemptSave:after):
- AbuseFilter
- ConfirmEdit
- EventLogging
- Gadgets
- JsonConfig
- ProofreadPage
- Scribunto
- SpamBlacklist
- TitleBlacklist
- Translate
- UploadWizard
- WikiEditor
- Wikidata
FlaggedRevs and VisualEditor create an EditPage object in order to extract UI components that they wish to reuse. MassMessage calls an EditPage static method for the same reason.
TwoColConflict subclasses EditPage in order to simulate conflicts, and couples tightly to the form parameters and internal EditPage fields when implementing a new conflict workflow.
Request access deeper in the stack
The proposed backend is not useful if the caller still has to set up a fake request to fool deeper parts of the stack. As such, the following methods that access RequestContext or WebRequest are concerning:
- The context title is accessed from WikitextContent::isCountable(), which is called during edit with $title = null
- Various things access the IP address from the request context, such as User::getBlockedStatus(), User::pingLimiter(), RecentChange::checkIPAddress() and AbuseFilter.
- User::getBlockedStatus() also accesses the request cookies and X-Forwarded-For header
- Probably other things