For categories, list=backlinks&blnamespace=14 returns the categories that *link to* the specified page -- that is, categories whose *descriptions* link to that page -- whereas prop=categories returns the categories that *contain *the specified page. These are two distinct relationships.
For portals, the software has no built-in notion of a portal "containing" a page, but you've defined it this way:
The <links> element contains <pl> items in namespaces 0 (articles), 14
(categories), and 100 (portals). I interpret that as "Portal:Novels contains these items", meaning that in tree terms it is the parent of those items, or that those items "belong to Portal:Novels".
That is, by your definition, "portal X *links to* page Y" and "portal X * contains* page Y" are the same relationship. So list=backlinks&blnamespace=100 (which returns the portal pages that *link to * the specified page) is equivalent to your hypothetical prop=portals (which would return the portal pages that *contain* the specified page).
Does that make sense?
-Ran Ari-Gur (user "Ruakh" on WMF projects)
On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 1:42 PM, Robert Crowe robert@ourwebhome.com wrote:
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to criticize. What I was trying to do is to validate that list=backlinks and prop=categories are querying for the same relationship if the backlinks namespace is set for categories, using blnamespace=14. If they were two ways to query for the same relationship between pages, then the results should be the same, but they are not.
I've been able to verify that prop=categories returns the correct relationship, because the inverse (list=categorymembers) returns the inverse result. If prop=categories indicates that A is a parent of B, then list=categorymembers correctly indicates that B is a child of A.
So what I'm trying to do is find the same relationship for portal pages (namespace=100). list=categorymembers also correctly returns the children who are portals, but I don't know how to find the parents that are portals.
Thanks in advance,
Robert
-----Original Message----- From: Andre Engels [mailto:andreengels@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, March 20, 2011 10:15 AM To: Robert Crowe Cc: MediaWiki API announcements & discussion Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-api] Portals vs categories
On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 5:43 PM, Robert Crowe robert@ourwebhome.com wrote:
Thanks André, but after testing it seems that backlinks returns something
else. For example this query:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&titles=Category:Voltaire&...
Returns:
<query> <pages> <page pageid="3465227" ns="14" title="Category:Voltaire"> <categories> <cl ns="14" title="Category:Categories named after French
people" />
<cl ns="14" title="Category:Categories named after philosophers"/>
<cl ns="14" title="Category:Categories named after writers" /> </categories> </page></pages> </query>
But this query:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=backlinks&bltitl...
Returns:
<query> <backlinks /> </query>
If I just use "Voltaire" instead of "Category:Voltaire" then I think it's
looking at a different page, right? The results are different, and don't match the first query results:
<query> <backlinks> <bl pageid="3465227" ns="14" title="Category:Voltaire" /> <bl pageid="15582893" ns="14" title="Category:Novels by Voltaire" /> </backlinks> </query>
You criticize my request because another request does not give the same result as a third request... I understand less and less of what you are trying to do.
-- André Engels, andreengels@gmail.com
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