Add Chemistry to a Wiki

The Learn Chemistry Wiki was a wiki (based on open-source MediaWiki software) of secondary school chemistry information (Substances, Experiments, Reactions and Quizzes) for teachers and students to view, interact with and contribute to. This project was developed in a collaboration between Dr Martin Walker at the State University of New York at Potsdam, ChemSpider and the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Education team and it was hosted by the Royal Society of Chemistry between January 2012 until September 2017. It has since been shut down and most of its resources consolidated into the main Learn Chemistry site.

The Learn Chemistry Wiki featured Mediawiki extensions that were developed by the Royal Society of Chemistry to enhance the chemistry functionality of the Learn Chemistry Wiki. We are now making the code available for anyone that they might be useful to. We would, however, caution that we will not be maintaining it, which will become more of an issue as the MediaWiki and 3rd party software (from Ketcher and InChI and Sarissa that they rely on move on (the current versions are already different from those that these extensions were developed with).

You may find this code useful if you are considering how to make a MediaWiki wiki chemical structure searchable, or if you wish to include quizzes which involve someone answering your questions by drawing a chemical structure.

The Royal Society of Chemistry MediaWiki extensions developed as part of the Learn Chemistry Wiki are:

• KetcherDrawer extension – adds a Ketcher structure drawer to a page for accompanying extensions to use the structure drawn in it e.g....
• KetcherSearchButton extension – adds a Search button to a page with a KetcherDrawer structure drawer in it, which when clicked will show the results of a search on the corresponding wiki for the drawn molecule’s InChIKey
• KetcherQuizAnswer extension – adds a "Submit Drawn Answer" button to a page with a KetcherDrawer structure drawer in it which when clicked will show results from a comparison of the InChI of the drawn structure with that of the correct structure (and some common wrong structures with warning messages specific to them)
• KetcherGenerateInChIButton extension - adds a “Generate InChI” button to a page with a KetcherDrawer structure drawer in it, which when clicked will show the InChI of the drawn molecule so that it is easier for a teacher to set up add the KetcherQuizAnswerButton to a page

The code is available on bitbucket with technical notes and there is more information about these extensions and how they work in this book chapter.