Re: [Mediawiki-api] Questions about the MediaWiki API Component

Thanks for the tip Roan, but I'm afraid I'm still having trouble with this. I just spent the last couple hours researching JSON callbacks, as I have never had a need to learn about it more until now. I'm specifically trying to pull the information from within a Flash AS3 program, so I also did a bit of research about reading and decoding JSON with ActionScript 3. Unfortunately, I just appear to be spinning my wheels and not making any real progress. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, but haven't yet been able to figure out what that is. Hopefully somebody here might be able to spot it. Here's a link to the tutorial I'm using for using JSON with AS3, but will summarize for brevity. ( http://www.cakesgood.com/2009/04/flash-cs3-actionscript-30-json-keep-it_327…) We basically use Flash's net classes to request the contents at the specified URL and then decode the expected JSON response using the Adobe core library (downloadable from the tutorial). Here is the resulting ActionScript 3 code: /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////AS3\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ import flash.net.URLRequest; import flash.net.URLLoader; import flash.events.*; import com.adobe.serialization.json.JSON; var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader(); var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest(); request.url = " http://en.wiktionary.org/w/api.php?format=json&callback=myFunc&acti… ; loader.load(request); loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, decodeJSON); function decodeJSON(event:Event):void { trace(event.target.data); var loader:URLLoader = URLLoader(event.target); var People:Array = JSON.decode(loader.data); trace(People); } /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////AS3\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ This results in a parse error and printing out the loader.data will display: myFunc(["play",["play"]]) I suspect this is due to an incorrect usage of the API call, but further testing and research have not produced any better results. I can't seem to get any JSON formatted call to return any contents from the page. During my research I stumbled on a collection of mediawiki-api emails where another developer (Borort) was having trouble converting XML to JSON and explained his reason for not exporting directly to JSON as: ( http://old.nabble.com/Problem-converting-new-XML-format-to-JSON-td24242786.… ) "The reason that i don't use format=*json* is it will not return the description and url of the result.." Roan's response to this was: "Actually, both the *JSON* opensearch format and the XML opensearch format are documented standards, but with different fields. IIRC, the opensearch module will refuse to output anything but these two, and will output *JSON* even if you set format=php. It's only intended to be used for browser search plugins (*JSON* for Firefox, XML for IE); for other purposes, you're probably better off using list=search or list=allpages&apprefix=Foo instead. Roan Kattouw (Catrope)" Am I simply using the incorrect api calls for this? Or should I be approaching this from an entirely different angle? The end goal is to search Wiktionary for the definition of a dynamically submitted word from within a Flash AS3 program, so I don't think there should be any problems with restricted information. Thanks again, Aaron. On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 3:00 AM, Roan Kattouw <roan.kattouw(a)gmail.com> wrote: