What means exactly the index parameter in this API search query? It's not what I guess or there is a bug. - Mediawiki-api

8 Oct 2015

Hi to all.

I'm trying to do an exercise from FreeCodeCamp 
(http://freecodecamp.com/challenges/zipline-build-a-wikipedia-viewer) and I'm 
using, for now, this query (link to the API Sandbox): 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox#action=query&list=sear…

I get something like this:

... 
"query": {        "pages": {            "53307": {          
     "pageid": 
53307,                "ns": 0,                "title":
"Lepidoptera",         
        "index": 1            },            "31500598": {             

"pageid": 31500598,                "ns": 0,               
"title": "List of 
Lepidoptera of Metropolitan France",                "index": 2           
},  
           "8279262": {                "pageid": 8279262,             

"ns": 0,                "title": "List of Lepidoptera that feed
on Ipomoea",  
               "index": 10            },            ...        },        ..., 
        "search": [            {                "ns": 0,              

"title": "Lepidoptera", "snippet": "The
Lepidoptera 
(/\u02ccl\u025bp\u0268\u02c8d\u0252pt\u0259r\u0259/ 
lep-i-DOP-t\u0259r-\u0259) is an order of insects that includes moths and 
butterflies (both called lepidopterans). 180,000 species", 
"titlesnippet": "Lepidoptera" 
}, { "ns": 0, "title":
"List of 
Lepidoptera of Metropolitan France", "snippet":
"Lepidoptera of France consist of both the

butterflies and moths recorded from Metropolitan France. According to a 
recent estimate, there are a total of",                "titlesnippet":
"List 
of <span class=\"searchmatch\">Lepidoptera</span> of Metropolitan
France"     
        },            {                "ns": 0,               
"title": 
"Macroglossinae (Lepidoptera)",                "snippet": "The
Macroglossinae 
are a sub-family of Sphingidae moths in the order <span 
class=\"searchmatch\">Lepidoptera</span>. The subfamily is divided into
three 
tribes: Dilophonotini, Macroglossini",                "titlesnippet": 
"Macroglossinae (<span
class=\"searchmatch\">Lepidoptera</span>)"            
},            ...        ]
         ...

Well... My doubt is: what thing exactly refers to the «index» parameter in 
«pages» objects? At first instance, I believed it was the index of the same 
page in the «search» array of objects. That seems logic. But, when using 
that, sometimes certain indexes simply don't match (they pair «pageid» from 
one page with «titlesnippet», «snippet», etc from another page). So, I don't 
know if that «index» parameter is, in fact, about some other thing or if, 
instead, there is a bug/problem with the API in this matter. And, of course, 
I know that array index order starts at 0. And already searched about this in 
the wiki, and found nothing.

If anybody can enlighten me about this, I will be very grateful :). Thanks in 
advance for reading me :).
And also my apologies in advance, just in case I commited some mistake here: 
this is my first time writing to a mailing list.