>
> On Feb 5, 2014 8:38 AM, "Zachary Harris" <zacharyharris@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > 1) Is there a way to tell the Parser that you don't want the initial DOM
> > element wrapped in paragraph tags? (For example, if you are client-side
> > injecting the mw-api contents into already existing content and you
> > don't want a paragraph break there?) It seems this same question was
> > effectively asked at
> > http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API_talk:Parsing_wikitext and hasn't been
> > answered yet.
> >   If the parser can't be configured in this way and I have to strip
> > possibly undesired openings tags myself do I have any guarantees on what
> > to expect?

Not really. Even innternally in core (in OutputPage and in Message class) we regex out the <p> when its not wanted. (Icky!)

>
> >
> > 2) Why do JSON results come back, for example, in the form of
> > parse.text['*'] rather than just parse.text? With format=XML the result
> > is just <parse><text>the stuff</text></parse>. Why the "*"? Sorry if
> > this question is dumb.
> >

From what i've heard, historical reasons mostly. I believe its so that the xml can be mechanically turned into json - the text body of an element is treated like an attribute * so that if that element had attributes they could also be represented.

-bawolff