In a MediaWiki page, how do I include a link to both a file and the file's description page

Question

In a MediaWiki page, I want to have a link to both the file and the file's description page. I've seen this done before, but I can't find it now... it looked something like

{{file|MyFileName|pdf|This is my PDF file}}

It ended up with the page showing "This is my PDF file" as a direct link, and a little PDF icon next to it that was actually a link to the description page. This worked with pdf, doc, docx, ppt, pptx, and more, I believe. The prefix at the beginning was always "file" and the 2nd option was where you put the file type.

Of course, I just tried this on my MediaWiki 1.19.0 installation and it doesn't work.

It looks like some kind of template transclusion, and either my configuration is wrong or I don't have the template or my MediaWiki version is too old. I have the File template, though because I can get half of it working like this:

[[:File:MyFileName.pdf|This is my PDF file]]

I even remember seeing a page describing these two formats as the "old" and "new" ways of linking to files, but I can't find that page now either.

Answer 1

To elaborate, the template would probably have a structure like this:

template:file

[[Media:{{{1|}}}.{{{2|}}}|{{{3|}}}]]<!--
-->[[File:{{{2|}}} icon.png|link=File:{{{1|}}}.{{{2|}}}]]

The go ahead and load an icon image for each file type you plan on using. (If the image isn't icon-sized, you'll want to add a width modifier in there as well.) With this template, {{file|MyFileName|pdf|This is my PDF file}} should generate exactly the output you describe: a direct link to MyFileName.pdf called "This is my PDF file", followed by an embedded image File:Pdf icon.png that is also a link to the description page for MyFileName.pdf.

Answer 2

You can create a simple version of such template like this:

[[Media:{{{1}}}.{{{2}}}|{{{3}}}]] [[:File:{{{1}}}.{{{2}}}|(description)]]

The Media namespace is used to directly link to the file; : specifies that you want to link to the description page and not show the file.

If you want to have an icon for each file type, you would need to {{#switch}} on the file types.