Transactions - Mediawiki-api

28 Aug 2007

I had an idea that would be nice to have implemented to the editing
api when it's done. The idea is to have some sort of transactions
(dunno if it's the right word), so that multiple edits are done only
if them all are possible. For example, if a program is to edit four
pages, lets say to nominate a page for deletion, thus first create a
nomination page, then link that page to the todays list, then add a
template to the actual page, and lastly notify the OP. All those edits
should only be done if them all can be done. With this functionality
should be an option to disable merge, and thus not make the edit if an
merge would be needed (to prevent two people to do almost the same
thing).

How to manage to do this could be difficult. one way would be to be
able to send multiple edit requests in one API call, but as the query
syntax (foo=bar&baz=quux) doesn't really support that (you would have
to index them then), a solution could be to allow queries using xml
instead.

An other more problematic implementation would be to have a meta call
to start and stop transactions. But that would raise the question how
long would the server keep a request in memory until discarded, i.e.
how long would it allow a client to wait sending the completion call.

Perhaps this is difficult to implement, as it would require multiple
edits to be performed as one atom, but it would be greatly to reduce
errors when failing to edit one of many required pages, as the example
above tells.

-- 
/Carl Fürstenberg &lt;azatoth(a)gmail.com&gt;