ScopedTypeaheadSearch: prefix searching may not handle main namespace correctly
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	AudreyPenven_WMDE
	Mar 28 2025, 11:18 AM

Description

Originally discussed in this comment on gerrit, there may be something wrong with selecting a scope by prefix.

From @ArthurTaylor's initial comment:

The current implementation doesn't quite work for my config. I have:
$wgNamespaceAliases = [
  'Item' => NS_MAIN, // NS_MAIN=0
  ...
];
and mw.config.get('wgNamespaceIds') includes:

{ "": 0, ... }

since the main namespace is unprefixed. The result is that typing : in the search box sets the drop-down to Item - I guess we don't want that. Also, because ns0 is then mapped to "", the Item namespace alias gets overwritten and it's not possible to switch to the Item namespace by typing Item:.

The issue where just typing a : switches to Item has been fixed. The task here is to investigate anything strange that happens with the main namespace.

It is possible this behavior is the result of (mis-)configuration of a local wiki.

(proposed) Acceptance Criteria

we know whether this is an issue that affects production
if it's related to configuration, there's some documentation that helps people avoid this in other wikibases
if it's a more general problem, we identify the cause and fix it

Related Objects
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Status	Subtype	Assigned	Task
Resolved		Arian_Bozorg	T321543 [EPIC] Making other entity types more accessible through the search box
Resolved		Lucas_Werkmeister_WMDE	T338483 [EPIC] Implement ScopedTypeaheadSearch component
Resolved	BUG REPORT	karapayneWMDE	T390274 ScopedTypeaheadSearch: prefix searching may not handle main namespace correctly

Event Timeline

AudreyPenven_WMDE created this task.Mar 28 2025, 11:18 AM

AudreyPenven_WMDE updated the task description. (Show Details)Mar 28 2025, 12:49 PM

ArthurTaylor moved this task from new to the board to Ready for Development on the Wikidata-Omega (The Board) board.Mar 31 2025, 5:02 AM

ArthurTaylor claimed this task.Mar 31 2025, 6:13 AM

ArthurTaylor moved this task from Ready for Development to In Development on the Wikidata-Omega (The Board) board.

It seems that the config I have is also the config Wikidata has:

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/operations/mediawiki-config/+/be4fab343a358c271d566f384baff6b042a53f7e/wmf-config/core-Namespaces.php#1892

	'+wikidata' => [
		'Item' => NS_MAIN,
		'Item_talk' => NS_TALK,
		'WD' => NS_PROJECT, // T43834
		'WT' => NS_PROJECT_TALK,
		'P' => 120, // T47079
		'L' => 146, // T195493
		'E' => 640, // T245529
	],

so this is at least a legitimate concern. Unfortunately, because the feature is not enabled on beta and the namespace configuration is not set on patchdemo, it might be difficult to test this on something other than a developer machine.

Okay. I had a dig into this, and it seems that the issue with my local setup was that I had not set:

	$wgWBRepoSettings['defaultEntityNamespaces'] = false;

in my DefaultLocalSettings.php after T291617 was completed. The change was notified in the RELEASE-NOTES-1.44 for Wikibase, but I obviously didn't read that at the time (or realised that it applied to my setup). With defaultEntityNamespaces true, the Item namespace was being registered both as 120 and as 0 on my local wiki, which was creating some confusion in the namespace mapping code in ScopedTypeaheadSearch.vue.

With the updated configuration, the feature works as expected - I can type item: and switch back to the Item namespace in the scoped selector. The setting is also explicitly set to false in the production config, so I'm optimistic that this will also "just work" in production.

ArthurTaylor removed ArthurTaylor as the assignee of this task.Mar 31 2025, 7:11 AM

ArthurTaylor moved this task from In Development to Ready for Peer Review on the Wikidata-Omega (The Board) board.

I don’t think I can review anything here, my local wiki doesn’t have items in the main namespace to begin with (I actually use defaultEntityNamespaces).