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pdf-citation-highlighter

Description

A Python application that highlights the provided citation on a given page of a PDF file.

The highlight color and port are configurable. The default highlight color can be overridden by the URL parameter.

The application is intended to run on MediaWiki sites. It provides a MediaWiki template for building PDF citation links. It uses a Cargo table with the allowed PDF URLs to prevent exploits.

Requirements

Installation

Clone the repository

Navigate to the webroot of your wiki server and run:

git clone https://github.com/richbodo/mw_pdf_highlights.git pdfcite

Install the required Python dependencies:

Install pipx to install the Python app in an isolated environment, e.g., in Debian:

sudo apt install pipx

Navigate to the application directory and create a virtual environment by running:

virtualenv venv
cd venv
source bin/activate

Install required modules:

./bin/pip install -r ../requirements.txt

In the environments lacking superuser permissions, use the above with the --prefer-binary switch.

Install MediaWiki extensions for your current core branch.

Navigate to the MediaWiki extensions directory and run:

git clone https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki-extensions-Cargo.git -b REL1_39 Cargo
git clone https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki-extensions-PageExchange.git -b REL1_39 PageExchange
git clone https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki-extensions-Widgets.git -b REL1_39 Widgets

Make sure the Widgets/compiled_templates is writable by the webserver:

chgrp www-data Widgets/compiled_templates
chmod g+w Widgets/compiled_templates

Download and install Widgets dependencies:

cd Widgets
composer update --no-dev

Enable extensions in the MediaWiki config file (LocalSettings.php):

wfLoadExtension( 'Cargo' );
wfLoadExtension( 'PageExchange' );
wfLoadExtension( 'Widgets' );

Create necessary database tables by running from the MediaWiki root:

php maintenance/update.php

Application Settings

We can create a file to modify the application settings:

cp app/config.env.example app/config/.env

Set the desired values for the following variables:

HIGHLIGHT_COLOR=#00FF33
PORT=5000

System Configuration

We need to configure:

  • Nginx web server to serve the application in the wiki path.
  • The MediaWiki LocalSettings.php to import the template for links generation.

Nginx

MediaWiki

Add the following lines to LocalSettings.php, below the inclusion of Page Exchange:

$wgPageExchangePackageFiles[]  = 'https://example.com/pdfcite/mediawiki/pdf-citation-highlighter.json';

Update database tables by running from the MediaWiki root:

php maintenance/update.php

Navigate to Special:Packages and install the PDF Citation Highlighter package. It will create necessary templates and documentation.

Running the application

The recommended way for production environments is to run the application as a system service.

sudo cp pdf-citation-highlighter.service /etc/systemd/system/
sudo systemctl enable --now pdf-citation-highlighter.service

In the development environments, the application can be managed manually using the following script:

sudo ./pdf-citation-highlighter.sh start|stop|restart

API Endpoint

The API endpoint is a GET endpoint that requires three parameters:

  • url: The URL of the PDF to be displayed
  • page: The page number to be scanned
  • search: The search string to be scanned on the specified page and highlighted

Example Usage

To use the API endpoint, send a GET request to the / endpoint with the required parameters. For example:

GET /?url=https://example.com/pdf.pdf&page=6&search=keyword#page=6

This will scan page 6 of the PDF at https://example.com/pdf.pdf for the search string keyword and highlight the results.

Opening a Specific Page

Note that we need to also specify #page=6 at the end of the URL to open the PDF on the specified page.