On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 3:58 AM, Liu Chenheng <liuchenheng@gmail.com> wrote:
I'd like to be notified as soon as the API changes. A simple way is to monitor the page http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php

Here is my problem:

Will the page http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php be always updated when the API changes (i.e. add/remove some new params) or the format of the response changes.

If not, are there any ways to monitor that? Thanks

Changes to the input parameters will show up in the API help, but changes in the output format will not.

Changes to the output format that are likely to break existing API users should be announced to the mediawiki-api-announce list;[1] these are also sent to this list automatically.

Changes to core API modules are also generally added to the RELEASE-NOTES file in the MediaWiki source,[2] under the "API" section, although this is sometimes forgotten due to the likelihood of merge conflicts (think "edit conflicts"), and changes to API modules added by extensions are not included there.

Each WMF-deployed branch of MediaWiki has a page[3] that lists the individual code changes since the last deployment branch. If nothing else, you could read through that.


 [1]: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-api-announce
 [2]: Currently https://git.wikimedia.org/blob/mediawiki%2Fcore.git/master/RELEASE-NOTES-1.23
 [3]: e.g. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.23/wmf8

--
Brad Jorsch (Anomie)
Software Engineer
Wikimedia Foundation