Mediawiki-api March 2013

mediawiki-api@lists.wikimedia.org

23 participants
16 discussions

Need to extract abstract of a wikipedia page
by aditya srinivas 23 Nov '23

23 Nov '23

Hello, I am writing a Java program to extract the abstract of the wikipedia page given the title of the wikipedia page. I have done some research and found out that the abstract with be in rvsection=0 So for example if I want the abstract of 'Eiffel Tower" wiki page then I am querying using the api in the following way. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&titles=Eiffel… and parse the XML data which we get and take the wikitext in the tag <rev xml:space="preserve"> which represents the abstract of the wikipedia page. But this wiki text also contains the infobox data which I do not need. I would like to know if there is anyway in which I can remove the infobox data and get only the wikitext related to the page's abstract Or if there is any alternative method by which I can get the abstract of the page directly. Looking forward to your help. Thanks in Advance Aditya Uppu

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Article Lat Long
by Chris Thomas 28 Apr '13

28 Apr '13

Ah ha, I think I have found it prop=coordinates Hoorah! Cheers CT

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Titleblacklists and spoof checks.
by Maximilian Doerr 27 Mar '13

27 Mar '13

Is the only purpose action=titleblacklist to validate? Can it be used to actually override the blacklist? If not then I have a proposal. Is it at all possible that the action can return an override token that can then be used in the task to be completed, if they have that right? Gesendet von Maximilian's iPhone. (Sent from Maximilian's iPhone.)

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Fwd: a comment w/r/t JSON vs. XML
by Sumana Harihareswara 26 Mar '13

26 Mar '13

At the Semantic MediaWiki conference (SMWCon) a few days ago, Yuri mentioned that we're considering making our web API JSON-only. In response, Steve Newcomb emailed me the message below, and gave me permission to forward it to mediawiki-api for your consideration. Thank you, Steve Newcomb. -- Sumana Harihareswara Engineering Community Manager Wikimedia Foundation Dear Ms. Harihareswara, The remarks that appear below, after my signature, are informed by participation in years of earnest presentations and discussions about XML vs. JSON at the Balisage conferences (see balisage.org). The below remarks are extracted from the documentation of a tool we use in our consulting practice, which includes data management/publishing services for U.S. government customers. The extract is from a discussion of how the tool can optionally format XML for human-readability *without* polluting the data with spurious new whitespace. Then it digresses to more general considerations in a NOTE which is directly relevant to the JSON vs. XML question. It all boils down to a simple question: will the data ever be used outside its current known applications and/or software? If the answer is "No", then JSON is probably the right choice. If the answer is "Yes", then XML is certainly a better choice, but then the questions arise: "Whose perspective on the data should be baked into it?", and "Who will pay the cost of baking it in?" All best wishes for you and for humanity's ongoing invention of civilization, which depends on the longevity of knowledge, Steve Newcomb srn(a)coolheads.com ---------------------------------- In consideration of the haphazard way in which XML data are sometimes processed in the real world, one may with some justification worry about how a given XML document may someday be understood, especially when whitespace is significant. [This tool's] use of markup characters for all readability-whitespace moots the criticism of XML that JSON is easier than XML to read and use for data interchange on account of the fact that, in JSON, all whitespace is intrinsically explicit and not subject to subsequent diddling when parsed, even when JSON data are elegantly formatted for readability. Note: Needless to say, both syntaxes, XML and JSON, have advantages and disadvantages. In the context of this discussion, it may be worthwhile to highlight the essential difference between JSON and XML, which is that XML provides (demands, really) an explicit distinction between data and data-about-data (metadata), while JSON does not. In other words, XML requires specific classes of things to be endowed with names, while JSON imposes no such constraint. XML offers a standard way of unambiguously distinguishing the names of classes of data, and the names of attributes of those classes, from the data themselves. These names must be chosen somehow. Normally, the chosen names are meaningful. The choice of a specific name by a human being is the making of a semantic commitment. Thus, in XML, data are expressed in a way that almost inevitably reflects how someone (perhaps even the author!) thought the data should, or at least could, be understood. JSON, by contrast, does not demand that such a perspective be explicitly embedded in the data. If such a perspective is embedded in JSON data, JSON does not provide a standard way of abstracting that perspective from the data. But neither syntax prohibits the processing of data in terms of a data/metadata perspective other than the one(s) that were embedded in them. Whatever information XML can convey, JSON can also convey, and vice versa. However, if a data/metadata distinction needs to be baked into the data, such as when the data may need to be understood by a human being apart from any specific software application, XML is simpler to use, and the baked-in data/metadata distinction will be universally understandable as such, not only because of the World Wide Web Consortium XML Recommendation, but also because of ISO International Standard 8879-1986, as amended. If a baked-in data/metadata distinction is not desired, JSON is pretty clearly the better choice, but then at least two questions arise: (1) Are you certain that an embedded data/metadata distinction will be undesirable for all future applications of these data, including applications that do not yet exist? (2) Are you certain that you wish to forego your opportunity to influence how these data will be understood, including by persons as yet unborn?

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Article Lat Long
by Chris Thomas 25 Mar '13

25 Mar '13

Hi, we would like to place Wikipedia locations on an interactive map, with the Article associated with it. Hopefully this will create an Map centric display of Wikipedia historical locations (rather than a text/page centric one.). Don't worry, full credit and links will be given. So. Is there a reliable way, using the API to gather the Co-ords of locations (that have them)? Ideally, we would like to have a pair of queries that. . Returns = Articles of a category, that ALSO have a location Co-ord specified . Returns = The article, or some kind of data block with that Co-ord, based on the articles Title I have watched the video tutorial, and dabbled with various Queries and Parses of pages. I can get a list of Articles that match a given Category, and I can compile a list of Categories. However, I am finding the geolocation data to be somewhat patchy. But that's probably down to me not knowing the magic formula. So, does anyone know how to address this issue? Any help most appreciated. Cheers Chris Thomas

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Re: [Mediawiki-api] Fwd: a comment w/r/t JSON vs. XML
by Steve Newcomb 25 Mar '13

25 Mar '13

I should have re-read this more carefully. Something (which wasn't germane anyway) is wrong: "...subsequent diddling when parsed, even when JSON data are elegantly formatted for readability." is wrong. "...subsequent diddling, even when JSON data are elegantly formatted for readability." is correct. I.e., "when parsed" doesn't belong there. Steve Newcomb On 03/24/2013 02:54 PM, Sumana Harihareswara wrote: > At the Semantic MediaWiki conference (SMWCon) a few days ago, Yuri > mentioned that we're considering making our web API JSON-only. In > response, Steve Newcomb emailed me the message below, and gave me > permission to forward it to mediawiki-api for your consideration. Thank > you, Steve Newcomb. >

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[Mediawiki-api-announce] Reminder on continuation ("breaking" changes coming soon)
by Brad Jorsch 24 Mar '13

24 Mar '13

Remember that clients should not be depending on the specific query string data returned inside the query-continue node, with either the old-style or new style continuation. As a partial fix for bug 24782[1], Gerrit change 22742 will cause action=query&list=recentchanges to start returning rccontinue for continuations rather than rcstart as it has done in the past. Changes of this type may be coming to other modules as well as further fixes to bug 24782 are implemented. [1]: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24782 [2]: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/22742/ -- Brad Jorsch Software Engineer Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Mediawiki-api-announce mailing list Mediawiki-api-announce(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-api-announce

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'Protect' protects a page to all wiki's participants (without take into account the 'protect group')
by Pericles Sobreira 19 Mar '13

19 Mar '13

Hi all. When I protect a certain page (action=protect&protections=edit=G8), all users of the wiki are blocked to edit it (as expected), but also, the participants of G8 (the group that should edit this page)... someone knows this issue? I initially created the following two lines in LocalSettings.php: $wgGroupPermissions['G8']['edit'] = false; $wgGroupPermissions['G8']['read'] = false; And after, I changed these permissions to 'true': $wgGroupPermissions['G8']['edit'] = true; $wgGroupPermissions['G8']['read'] = true; I have also modified the following line in the DefaultSettings.php file: $wgRestrictionLevels = array( '', 'autoconfirmed', 'sysop','G1','G2','G3','G4','G5','G6','G7','G8'); But, nothing... Does anyone know if there is something to configure/do yet? Thanks for your help. péricles -- «L’homme qui veut s’instruire doit lire d’abord, et puis voyager pour rectifier ce qu’il a appris.» “The man who seeks to educate himself must first read and then travel in order to correct what he has learned.” CASANOVA, Giovanni Giacomo

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[Mediawiki-api-announce] MediaWiki API changes & new "continue" functionality
by Yuri Astrakhan 19 Mar '13

19 Mar '13

== *Changes* == * list=watchlist now returns user id in properly named tag in addition to "user". In the case of wlprop=user|userid, the "user" will be the name, not the id as before.(patch <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/49390/> by Petr Onderka) * meta=allmessages&lang= will now return "aminvalidlang" error in case "lang" contains invalid characters (patch<https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/53362/> by Anomie) == *New functionality* == * There is now a new<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Query#Continuing_queries>, simplified way to iterate through the query results. The new feature will make it much less likely to accidentally skip any data, and will greatly simplify client code. It will be made default in API 2.0<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/API_Future>, but for now has to be explicitly enabled with a "*continue=*" parameter. See sample code <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Query#Continuing_queries> how to use the new continue. Please consider using it in all new development. ( patch <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/50930/> by yurik) == *See also* == * API roadmap<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/API_Future> * API cleanup<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/API_roadmap/Naming_Clean…> *== Important reminder to API users ==* Please ensure you set the user agent string to contain both the name of your tool, the framework it uses, and a way to contact you. See User-Agent policy <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User-Agent_policy>. API users that do not follow this policy may be banned at any moment. Example:* MyCoolTool/1.1 (http://example.com/MyCoolTool/; MyCoolTool(a)example.com) BasedOnSuperLib/1.4* ** --yurik _______________________________________________ Mediawiki-api-announce mailing list Mediawiki-api-announce(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-api-announce

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Fwd: Yuri Astrakhan & Adam Baso join Mobile department partner team
by Sumana Harihareswara 18 Mar '13

18 Mar '13

Yuri, whom you've seen working on the MediaWiki API, now works for the Wikimedia Foundation. :-) best, Sumana Harihareswara -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Wmfall] Yuri Astrakhan & Adam Baso join Mobile department partner team Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 10:29:42 -0700 From: Tomasz Finc <tfinc(a)wikimedia.org> To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, "Staff (All)" <wmfall(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Greetings all, I'm pleased to announce that the mobile department has two new staff members. Yuri Astrakhan & Adam Baso join as sr. software developers on the mobile partner team. In this role Yuri and Adam will support projects like Wikipedia Zero, SMS/USSD, and J2ME to further the reach of our projects in geographic areas that have both financial and technical impediments to access Wikipedia. They will be working closely with Kul and Dan from the global development group. Yuri has been heavily involved in Wikipedia-related projects 2005-2007 developing the API framework and querying subsystem, contributing to pywikibot code, and making millions of changes as yurikbot, while at the same time working as a software consultant for several large banks. In 2008 Yuri joined a small hedge-fund to lead the development of an automated trading platform. While there, Yuri continued various open source projects such as time-series database (timeseriesdb). After over five years, Yuri has rejoined the MediaWiki community and will be working for us from New York. Adam spent the past seven years working in the field of information security, specializing in application security, identity management, and encryption in the retail, government, and banking sectors. Adam led the OWASP Minneapolis-Saint Paul chapter for a couple of years, and proudly organized the OWASP AppSec USA 2011 conference. Adam and his wife are relocating to San Francisco from Minneapolis-Saint Paul, and they look forward to the opportunity to live in such a thriving software-friendly community. The mobile group is excited and proud to welcome both Yuri & Adam as sr. engineers to the partner team. This completes the team and allows them to work aggressively to reach our 4 billion page target through outreach projects like Wikipedia Zero. Please join me in welcoming Yuri and Adam to the Wikimedia Foundation! --tomasz _______________________________________________ Wmfall mailing list Wmfall(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wmfall

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Mediawiki-api March 2013