On Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 10:32 AM, Max Vlasov max.vlasov@gmail.com wrote:
I'm using two step approach to retrieve "see also" section links from articles by retrieving sections and using the section index for links action. Today I noticed that for the article "Synchronous programming language" this gives unexpected results.
The page https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=parse&prop= sections&page=Synchronous%20programming%20language&format=xml
returns ... <s toclevel="1" level="2" line="See also" number="4" index="4" .....
and the following query
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=parse&prop= links&page=Synchronous%20programming%20language§ion=4&format=xml
gives a long list of links very different to the actual correct list shown in the wikipedia article. Other usage of the same algorithm with other articles works correctly.
Is this a bug?
No, it's not a bug. The "See also" section on that article also happens to contain the navbox, so you're getting all the links from the navbox as well as the links you expect.
Most articles don't have this problem because the "References" and "External links" sections usually come after "See also", as described at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Layout#ORDER. So the navboxes would wind up being part of those sections instead.