This is the workshop support page for the user script StripSearch.js. Comments and requests concerning the program are most welcome. Please post discussion threads below the section titled Discussions. Thank you. By the way, the various scripts I have written are listed at the bottom of the page.

This script is functional

StripSearch.js: strips Wikipedia search results down to bare pagenames. It provides the "SR detail" menu item to hide/show the search results' details and the sister project results. Search results are preprocessed to remove all redirected entries and members of matching categories, so that they do not show up at all.

Note that a newer script, called SearchSuite.js provides each of these features on their own switches, plus it has a sort feature, and a feature that can add wikicode to list items for easy copying and pasting.

This is the work area for developing the script and its documentation. The talk page portion of this page starts at #Discussions, below.

This script is functional

StripSearch.js: strips Wikipedia search results down to bare pagenames. It provides the "SR detail" menu item to hide/show the search results' details and the sister project results. Search results are preprocessed to remove all redirected entries and members of matching categories, so that they do not show up at all.

When initially installed, the program adds the "SR detail (hide)" item to the Tools menu in the side bar, which appears when a search results page is displayed. Clicking on that turns the search results into a bare single spaced list of article links, makes the sister project results disappear, and the menu item becomes "SR detail (show)". In case you missed it, "SR" stands for "search results".

The program remembers its mode between pages, and so all search results will be stripped until "SR detail (show)" is clicked. Then it will go back to showing search results in the original format, including the sister project results in the right hand column.

To install this script, do the following:

In your common.js page or your skin.js page (replace "skin" with the name of the skin you are using), add this line:

importScript("User:The Transhumanist/StripSearch.js");

Save the page and bypass your cache to make sure the changes take effect. By the way, only logged-in users can install scripts.

This section explains the source code, in detail. It is for JavaScript programmers, and for those who want to learn how to program in JavaScript. Hopefully, this will enable you to adapt existing source code into new user scripts with greater ease, and perhaps even compose user scripts from scratch.

You can only use so many comments in the source code before you start to choke or bury the programming itself. So, I've put short summaries in the source code, and have provided in-depth explanations here.

My intention is Threefold:

1. to thoroughly document the script so that even relatively new JavaScript programmers can understand what it does and how it works, including the underlying programming conventions. This is so that the components and approaches can be modified, or used again and again elsewhere, with confidence. (I often build scripts by copying and pasting code that I don't fully understand, which often leads to getting stuck). To prevent getting stuck, the notes below include extensive interpretations, explanations, instructions, examples, and links to relevant documentation and tutorials, etc. Hopefully, this will help both you and I grok the source code and the language it is written in (JavaScript).
2. to refresh my memory of exactly how the script works, in case I don't look at the source code for weeks or months.
3. to document my understanding, so that it can be corrected. If you see that I have a misconception about something, please let me know!

In addition to plain vanilla JavaScript code, this script relies heavily on the jQuery library.

If you have any comments or questions, feel free to post them at the bottom of this page under Discussions. Be sure to {{ping}} me when you do.

The script uses the jQuery method .hide() for stripping the elements by class name. Here's an example of stripping out elements with the class name "searchalttitle":

$( ".searchalttitle" ).hide();

Learn about methods at https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_object_methods.asp

Learn about .hide at http://api.jquery.com/hide/

An alias is one string defined to mean another. Another term for "alias" is "shortcut". In the script, the following aliases are used:

$ is the alias for jQuery (the jQuery library)

mw is the alias for mediawiki (the mediawiki library)

These two aliases are set up like this:

( function ( mw, $ ) {}( mediaWiki, jQuery ) );

That also happens to be a "bodyguard function", which is explained in the section below...

The bodyguard function assigns an alias for a name within the function, and reserves that alias for that purpose only. For example, if you want "t" to be interpreted only as "transhumanist".

Since the script uses jQuery, we want to defend jQuery's alias, the "$". The bodyguard function makes it so that "$" means only "jQuery" inside the function, even if it means something else outside the function. That is, it prevents other javascript libraries from overwriting the $() shortcut for jQuery within the function. It does this via scoping.

The bodyguard function is used like a wrapper, with the alias-containing source code inside it, typically, wrapping the whole rest of the script. Here's what a jQuery bodyguard function looks like:

1 ( function($) {
2     // you put the body of the script here
3 } ) ( jQuery );

See also: bodyguard function solution.

To extend that to lock in "mw" to mean "mediawiki", use the following (this is what the script uses):

1 ( function(mw, $) {
2     // you put the body of the script here
3 } ) (mediawiki, jQuery);

For the best explanation of the bodyguard function I've found so far, see: Solving "$(document).ready is not a function" and other problems   (Long live Spartacus!)

The ready() event listener/handler makes the rest of the script wait until the page (and its DOM) is loaded and ready to be worked on. If the script tries to do its thing before the page is loaded, there won't be anything there for the script to work on (such as with scripts that will have nowhere to place the menu item mw.util.addPortletLink), and the script will fail.

In jQuery, it looks like this: $( document ).ready(function() {});

You can do that in jQuery shorthand, like this:

$().ready( function() {} );

Or even like this:

$(function() {});

The part of the script that is being made to wait goes inside the curly brackets. But you would generally start that on the next line, and put the ending curly bracket, closing parenthesis, and semicolon following that on a line of their own), like this:

1 $(function() {
2     // Body of function (or even the rest of the script) goes here, such as a click handler.
3 });

This is all explained further at the jQuery page for .ready()

For the plain vanilla version see: http://docs.jquery.com/Tutorials:Introducing_$(document).ready()

I didn't know what else to call these. I wanted the program to only work when intended, and only on intended pages (search result pages). So, I applied the conditional, if.

The script basically says "if we are on the search results page, do what's between the curly brackets". (Which includes the entire rest of the program). Actually, we're using a double negative "if the title does not not have this in the title". != means "not equal to", and the -1 indicates "does not exist".

// Run this script only if " - Search results - Wikipedia" is in the page title
    if (document.title.indexOf(" - Search results - Wikipedia") != -1) {

There is no prep work in this script. This would be the declaration of global variables and so on.

This is the part controls the main flow of the script (decides what to do under what circumstances):

            if ( mw.config.get( 'skin' ) === 'vector' ) {
                $( function() {

                    // hide elements by class per http://api.jquery.com/hide
                    $( ".searchalttitle" ).hide();
                    $( ".searchresult" ).hide();
                    $( ".mw-search-result-data" ).hide();

                } );
            }

So, what this does is 4 things:

First, it checks if the Vector skin is being used and runs the rest of the script only if it is.

Then it applies the jQuery method .hide on all elements labeled as any of these 3 classes: searchalttitle, searchresult, or mw-search-result-data.

To use an object method, you append it to the end of an element, as is done with .hide() 3 times above. Don't forget the parentheses, and be sure to end your statements with a semicolon.

Learn more about .hide at http://api.jquery.com/hide/

This looks up the value for skin (the internal name of the currently used skin) saved in MediaWiki's configuration file.

• jQuery get() Method
• mw.config

"===" means "equal value and equal type"

• JavaScript Comparison and Logical Operators

	// Hide interwiki results (per http://api.jquery.com/hide)
	$('#mw-interwiki-results').hide();

To write the above, I searched the pagesource for the classes of the data displayed in the right-hand column, traced back to their parent "id="mw-interwiki-results", wrapped that in a jQuery object ("$" means "jQuery"), and then attached the hide method to it.

• 2017-09-25
  • Started script
  • Version 1.0 complete
    • Removes lines with page data from the search results
    • Removes content excerpts from the search results
    • Removes "from redirect" comments from the search results
  • Strips out sister project results (from right-hand column)

Completed features are marked with  Done

Improvements that would be nice:

• Remove lines with page data from search results  Done
• Remove content excerpts from search results  Done
• Remove "from redirect" comments from search results  Done
• Strip sister project results  Done
• Remove the drawn lines between the search result entries Y problem went away
• Remove alternating background colors from behind the search results Y problem went away
• Reduce spacing between result entries  Done
• Remove redirected entries and members of matching categories from the search results  Done
• A note at the top of the search column "search results formatted by StripSearch.js", linked to the instruction manual section of the script's workshop page.
• Try catch on the menu item calls
• There's a bug buried in the <a> sequence that is rendered moot by the searchalttitle removal statement. The bug should still be fixed for the sake of future forks of this program.

The Transhumanist, where you use local storage.getItem() or setItem() you should always wrap that in try catch, as it can fail at any moment (even if you checked previously). This can be due to the browser running out of storage space for the domain, or because the browser is running in privacy mode or with an ad blocker extensions or something. Also, your new RegExp() calls should be lifted outside of the for loops, so that they aren't continuously recreated. For wpTextbox1.value, realise that sometimes the content might be managed by an editor (The syntaxhighlighting beta does this for instance). We use the jquery.textSelection plugin to abstract way from these differences. Don't check document.title, check mw.config.get( 'wgTitle' ) or mw.config.get( 'wgPageName' ). And when you use mw.util.addPortlink, you have to ensure that the mediawiki.util plugin is loaded already, which you can do by using mw.loader.using. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:47, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Add a note at the top of the search column "search results formatted by StripSearch.js, linked to the instruction manual section of the script's workshop page.

• StripSearchSimple.js – an early version of this script.
• StripSearchInWikicode.js
• StripSearchSorted.js

Post new discussion threads below.