Hi,
1) what is the etiquette for how to do this politely?
See
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Etiquette.
2) what are the best practice for using curl to submit
API requests?
* is it best to use a single curl command with a long list of URLs to get,
or a long list of individual curl commands?
I think that doesn't matter much. What does matter is how many API
requests you make. It's better if you use smaller amount of requests,
by combining them into one query. For example, to get the text of two
pages in one query, you would use URL like
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&rvpro…
* compressed or not?
I think you should always use compression if the server supports it.
And MediaWiki API does.
* retry values?
That depends on why are you retrying. If it's because of maxlag, the
recommendation is at least 5 seconds. But I think exponential backoff
is even better.
* max-redirs?
The API shouldn't redirect you, as far as I know.
* other parameters?
They probably don't matter much. But as the Etiquette page notes, you
probably shouldn't be making request in parallel.
Petr Onderka
[[en:User:Svick]]