Module:Main/doc
This is the documentation page for Module:Main
 | This Lua module is used on 228,000+ pages. To avoid major disruption and server load, any changes should be tested in the module's /sandbox or /testcases subpages, or in your own module sandbox. The tested changes can be added to this page in a single edit. Consider discussing changes on the talk page before implementing them. |
 | This module is subject to page protection. It is a highly visible module in use by a very large number of pages, or is substituted very frequently. Because vandalism or mistakes would affect many pages, and even trivial editing might cause substantial load on the servers, it is protected from editing. |
 | This module depends on the following other modules: |
This module produces a link to a main article or articles. It implements the {{main}} template. Normally, it produces a link like "Main article: A". If used in the category namespace, it produces a link like "The main article for this category is A". It is possible to specify multiple articles, and in this case plural wording is used automatically. If the first link is not an article, the module uses the wording "Main page" instead of "Main article".
Usage from wikitext
This module cannot be accessed directly from #invoke. Instead, it can only be used through the {{main}} template. Please see the template page for documentation.
Usage from other Lua modules
Load the module:
local mMain = require('Module:Main')
You can then use the _main function like this:
mMain._main(args, options)
The args parameter following options are a list of page link strings; if they use custom display values, each string should be preprocessed into a single piped string (e.g. page|display value). Category or file links are automatically escaped using the colon trick. If a link includes a section name, and no display value is set, links are automatically formatted as page § section, rather than the MediaWiki default of page#section.
The optional options table can be used to configure the function's output. At present, the only option available is "selfref", which is used when the output is a self-reference to Wikipedia. to set this option, use {selfref = true}. (See the {{selfref}} template for more details on self-references.)
Example 1
mMain._main({'A'})
Produces:
<div role="note" class="hatnote navigation-not-searchable">Main article: [[A]]</div>
Displays as:
Example 2
mMain._main({'Wikipedia:Categorization', 'Help:Category', 'Category:Wikipedia categories'})
Produces:
<div role="note" class="hatnote navigation-not-searchable">Main pages: [[Wikipedia:Categorization]], [[Help:Category]] and [[:Category:Wikipedia categories]]</div>
Displays as:
Example 3
mMain._main({'A|the letter "A"', 'B|the letter "B"', 'C|the letter "C"'})
Produces:
<div role="note" class="hatnote navigation-not-searchable">Main articles: [[A|the letter "A"]], [[B|the letter "B"]] and [[C|the letter "C"]]</div>
Displays as:
Example 4
mMain._main({'Wikipedia:Verifiability#Burden'}, {selfref = true})
Produces:
<div role="note" class="hatnote navigation-not-searchable selfref">Main article: [[Wikipedia:Verifiability#Burden|Wikipedia:Verifiability § Burden]]</div>
Displays as:
Example 5 (if used in the category namespace)
mMain._main({'A'})
Produces:
<div role="note" class="hatnote navigation-not-searchable">The main article for this [[Wikipedia:Categorization|category]] is [[A]]</div>
Displays as:
Technical details
This module uses Module:Hatnote to format the hatnote text, Module:Hatnote list to process the list of links, and Module:Arguments to fetch the arguments from wikitext.