---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Brion Vibber <brion(a)pobox.com>
Date: Tue, May 3, 2011 at 8:19 PM
Subject: API YAML output change heads-up
To: Roan Kattouw <roan(a)wikimedia.org>
One of the MediaWiki API's output formats for some time has been YAML
<http://www.yaml.org> -- while it doesn't seem to be widely used, it
is there and I assume someone, somewhere is pulling data in this
format. :)
The spyc library we've used to generate YAML output has had a number
of bugs; recently, MediaWiki development trunk has resolved this by
replacing spyc with the existing JSON output module:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28591
Since YAML is a superset of JSON, this should be a transparent change
-- YAML clients should interpret the new output into the same data
structures as before.
Be aware though that there will be differences where previously the
formatting was affected by bugs in the YAML outputter, such as this
example:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/86302#c16513
If your code relied on particular structures in YAML output, it could
fail with the corrected structures; please double-check that your code
continues to work if switched over to format=json.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)