how to resolve image url - Mediawiki-api

15 Nov 2013

Hi,

I am writing a mobile client that can show wikipedia content. My  
approach is to download the raw media-wiki markup instead of the  
generated html.  This allows me more control and I avoid using a html  
parser/viewer.

The approach is quite successful except for when I encounter images.
In the markup I can see something like;
   File:1945-P-Jefferson-War-Nickel-Reverse.JPG

I use  the API to fetch some metadata;
  en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=imageinfo \
   &iilimit=1&format=xml&iiprop=dimensions%7Cmime&titles=[foo]

The piece of the puzzle I am still missing is how to find out the  
actual download URL for any given image.

I've seen images start with;
  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6d/
and with;
  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/

But I don't really understand how to decide what url to prefix to my  
image-name.
Anyone can shed some light on this?

Thanks!
-- 
Thomas Zander