2010/6/9 Aaron Ward <edugamer(a)gmail.com>om>: Also, please note that any cross-domain policy that's blocking you is on *your client's* side, not on Wikimedia's side. We don't care where API requests come from, but clients do care where you send API requests to (same domain only in most cases). Roan Kattouw (Catrope)

2010/6/9 Aaron Ward <edugamer(a)gmail.com>om>: Yes, you're taking a totally wrong angle here. Any cross-domain restrictions are imposed by Flash or whatever it is you're using to send your HTTP requests. The API or WMF's servers have nothing to do with this: Flash or the browser or whatever is preventing your requests from ever being sent. These cross-domain restrictions are being imposed for security reasons. I only know about the restrictions web browsers impose, where JSON callbacks allow for a 'loophole' that allows cross-domain request in a limited way but is still secure. Again, the API implements JSON callbacks so this technique can be used, but doesn't impose the restrictions that cause people to use callbacks in the first place, that's done by the browser. I'm afraid I can't help you with restrictions imposed by Flash, as I'm not familiar with them. Roan Kattouw (Catrope)

regarding Wikimedia, a universal cross-domain-policy xml does not exist on the WMF servers specifically due to a potential security risk, which is mentioned in the article QQ just linked. The author of that article also states that these security issues are limited to the specific directory where the crossdomain.xml file is located and that the developer would have to specifically call on that file to facilitate the connection. If that is true, might it be possible to setup a directory (if one doesn't already exist) where basic, read-only queries can be implemented to open up the WikiMedia content to Flash developers? Alternatively, I was wondering if it might be possible to set my server up as a sort of proxy to go between Wiktionary and the Flash program. If I can use PHP, JavaScript, or HTML to query the WMF database and retrieve the desired definition, then I should be able to forward that information on to the game that requested it using my own cross-domain-policy. Any thoughts would be appreciated! Aaron. On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 4:05 PM, OQ <overlordq(a)gmail.com> wrote:

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- Van: mediawiki-api-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org namens Aaron Ward Verzonden: wo 9-6-2010 22:01 Aan: MediaWiki API announcements & discussion Onderwerp: 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:

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- Van: mediawiki-api-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org namens OQ Verzonden: do 10-6-2010 1:05 Aan: MediaWiki API announcements & discussion Onderwerp: Re: [Mediawiki-api] Questions about the MediaWiki API Component On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 3:59 PM, Roan Kattouw <roan.kattouw(a)gmail.com> wrote: Actually with flash, the WMF servers do have something to do with it. Flash would require[1] a crossdomain.xml file on them to permit its access. 1 - http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/cross_domain_policy.html _______________________________________________ Mediawiki-api mailing list Mediawiki-api(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-api

Hello again, I've spent a bit of time looking through the JavaScript documentation, PHP documentation, and the API documentation but haven't been able to get any kind of return data from the API. I started by trying to use the example Roan provided in JavaScript and learned a bit more about function usage in JavaScript, but I'm still getting nothing back from wiktionary. Could someone provide me with a simple, working example that actually returns a value? I've tried a number of different things, including the get_file_contents in PHP (which did echo a barebone representation of the page I loaded), but I've reverted back to the example Roan provided. Again, I'm trying to get the definition for a dynamically submitted word. Any parse-able format with the definition would work fine. Here's the example I've been working with. The function works in either script block and I have moved it around trying to get the callback to actually DO something. So far, nothing happens. <html> <body> <script type="text/javascript" src=" http://en.wiktionary.org/w/api.php?format=json&callback=myFunc&acti… "> function myFunc(str){ document.write(str); document.write("Hrm"); } </script> <script type="text/javascript" > //myFunc("hello"); </script> </body> </html> Thanks again, Aaron. On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 4:42 PM, Roan Kattouw &lt;roan.kattouw(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

Thanks Roan, that helped a bit. You were correct, the myFunc() definition had to be placed before the src. Through further research I discovered (what I believe is) the exact API call that I need for the output that I desire. However, I'm still having trouble with JavaScript accessing the returned value from the callback. At this point, I'm trying to assign the callback value to a variable and print it to the screen to confirm that I have what I'm after. So far, the only value I've been able to retrieve from the callback is: [object Object] What I'm after is what is printed to the screen when you go to the following link: http://en.wiktionary.org/w/api.php?format=json&callback=myFunc&acti… Does anybody see where I'm going wrong or have any suggestions? ///////////////////////////////////////////////////// <html> <body> <script type="text/javascript" > //myFunc("hello"); function myFunc(str){ document.write(str); //var testVar = JSON.parse(str); //document.write(testVar); //location.href = "http://www.myURL.com/test.php?str="+str; } </script> <script type="text/javascript" src=" http://en.wiktionary.org/w/api.php?format=json&callback=myFunc&acti… </body> </html> ///////////////////////////////////////////////////// Thanks again, Aaron. On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 3:40 AM, Roan Kattouw &lt;roan.kattouw(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote;wrote:

2010/6/15 Aaron Ward &lt;edugamer(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: testVar is an object, yes, and assuming you're looking for the content of the revision, you need to 1) not try to parse str for JSON, it's already an object 2) add &indexpageids to your API URL and 3) access the text with str.query.pages[testVar.query.pageids[0]].revisions[0]['*'] . This assumes you didn't get an error result or a nonexistent page or whatever: in that case, this code will cause a JS error, so write code that defends against this. You can also examine the structure of the parsed JSON object in Firebug (a Firefox extension for debugging JavaScript), by placing a breakpoint inside myFunc(). Roan Kattouw (Catrope)