New subject: Finding out Wikidata item out of Wikipedia article via API

10 Aug 2016

Hi all

This is my first post in this list. I'm not clear if this is the best 
place for me to ask this question, so feel free to recommend some other 
contact point.

Context:

I am trying to find out via API what is the Wikidata item from a 
Wikipedia page. This is visible in the Tools side bar in the Wikipedia 
page but I can't figure out how to get this information from the API.

Question:

How can I get via API the Wikidata item matching a given Wikipedia article?

Example:

Say that the starting point is Albert Einstein's page in the English 
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein). I can get the 
page content via API like so:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&format=json&titles=… 
Einstein&prop=revisions&rvprop=content

I can get plenty of other info by using some other params to the query 
action. Some I have tried include:

    prop:extlinks, prop:info, meta:filerepoinfo, etc.

None of these contain the Wikidata item matching the article though. I 
couldn't find out anything about it in the MediaWiki API help.

As of now, the best I can do is:

1. Query Wikidata with the page title like so:

https://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?format=json&action=wbsearchentities&…

Einstein&language=en

2. Browse through the output for the desired Albert Einstein entry among:

  * Q937, Albert Einstein, German-American physicist and founder of the
    theory of relativity
  * Q13426745, Albert Einstein, Studio album by Prodigy and The Alchemist
  * Q15990626, Albert Einstein, Wikimedia disambiguation page
  * 3 more entries

This adds a complication, as I need the intelligence to tell which is 
the Wikidata item I was looking for, whereas in the Wikipedia page in 
the browser I can access the item (Q937) directly.

Any help much appreciated.

Regards,

Adrian Tineo