Template:External

Usage

The template can be used to mark external links.

This template grants that external links will be collected in category:External Link. So we keep an overview of external links and control their actuality routinely.

For Links to pages on the railML^®-site (https://railml.org), please use Template:Site.

Please, consider, that the template contains an exception for links to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), as there are too many links to W3C data types — we want to avoid the reading flow being disturbed.

🗒️ An outline on Citations and References within the railML® wikis can be found here.

Dependencies

🗒️ The template requires the extension StringFunctions, comp. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:StringFunctions (external link).

Arguments

The template has an obligatory and five optional argument:

• Obligatory; unnamed
  • 1: the link target, e.g. https://uic.org. Please, recognize the note below.

💡 If the content of the unnamed arguments contains equality signs this can easily result in errors. example {{site|https://www.railml.org/forum/index.php?t=msg&goto=71&|Heidrun Jost BaliseGroup and its attributes railML forum post}}<nowiki />}} results in: [Heidrun Jost BaliseGroup and its attributes railML forum post Heidrun Jost BaliseGroup and its attributes railML forum post] (link to the railML® website) There are two remedies: Either make the argument number explicit: {{site|1=https://www.railml.org/forum/index.php?t=msg&goto=71&|2=Heidrun Jost BaliseGroup and its attributes railML forum post}} Or escape all equality signs via url encoding () in the first argument and with HTML entities () in the second argument: {{site|https://www.railml.org/forum/index.php?t%3Dmsg&goto%3D71&|Heidrun Jost BaliseGroup and its attributes railML forum post}}

• Optional
  • 2 or text: the link text. If it is empty, the link target will be used as link text. This argument can be used both named or unnamed. Please, recognize the note above.
  • archive: Provide an archive link in case the source is no longer available. On default, the original URL (argument 1) be displayed and the archive URL will be linked.
  • date: the publication date of the file
  • type: the file type, e.g. PDF
  • lang: the language of the link target file, e.g. EN. For EN, FR, DE, NL, NO, CZ and ES a flag will be displayed. In all other cases the input string will be returned.
  • size: the file size — use only for very big files beyond 25 M!
  • visited: the date when the file was visited
  • inlang: en (=default), de or fr for a notice in the language of the context
  • comment: anything that does not fit into the other parameters; a string to be displayed directly
  • mode: if mode=silent, the link will not be commented.
  • inline: dummyargument. Set inline=1 whenever you employ the template outside <ref> tags to show that this is on purpose not in a footnote.

If the second argument is unnamed (example: {{external|https://example.ex|some example text}}), it will be interpreted as link text. If the second argument is named (example:{{external|https://example.ex|type=some file format}}), it will be interpreted according to the argument name.

Examples

Code	Output
{{external|https://www.uic.org}}	https://www.uic.org (external link)
{{external|https://www.uic.org|International Union of Railways}}	International Union of Railways (external link)
{{external|https://www.uic.org|type=HTML}}	https://www.uic.org (external link, HTML)
{{external|https://www.uic.org|lang=EN|text=UIC}}	UIC (external link, 🇬🇧)
{{external|https://www.uic.org|UIC|type=HTML|lang=EN}}	UIC (external link, HTML, 🇬🇧)
{{external|https://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/#language}}	https://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/#language
{{external|https://railml.org|mode=silent}}	https://railml.org
{{external|https://railml.org|{{rml}} site|mode=silent}}	railML® site
{{external|http://www.railml.org/en/index-en.shtml|archive=https://web.archive.org/web/20030527011905/http://www.railml.org/en/index-en.shtml}}	http://www.railml.org/en/index-en.shtml (external archive link)