Hi all,
I'm finding myself making calls to the live api on the wmf wikis and
thinking: Writing the query from scratch for every detail (or copying
it from the bits and pieces in mw source code) for every time I need
the data is nonsense since it was already done..... in mediawiki core.
MediaWiki uses the API internally as well in some places (more in
extensions) with a FauxRequest (which is calling the api without a
real http request).
From a server hosting a live MediaWiki-site it's very easy (php
include includes/WebStart.php anad make a FauxRequest() - one can make
several requests all without making a http request ). However from the
toolserver it's a little trickier since we're not on the same server.
So I was thinking :
* upload a mediawiki install (the same version that WMF runs, ie.
1.16wmf4 or 1.17wmf1)
* make it not publically accessable (we don't want people actually
browsing the wiki)
* Configure it in a special way so that one can use the same code for
any wiki (ie. a $lang and $family variable of some kind)
Then one can include includes/WebStart.php, and use the API (ie. using
the huge library of quiries already in the MediaWiki core (ie.
action=query&list=categorymembers, using generators and getting
properties, you name it) like this:
<source>
$site = 'wikipedia';
$lang = 'en';
require( $mw_root . '/includes/WebStart.php' ); // loads all common
code including LocalSettings.php
// LocalSettings contains extra code to check for $site and $lang
figuring out the correct $wgDBname,
// $wgDBserver etc. a tiny bit like wmf's CommonSettings.php
$apiRequest = array(
'action' => 'query',
'list' => '...',
/* etc. */
);
/* etc. */
</source>
This should basically be includable by anyone so that not everybody
has to re-do this.
ie. it could be in /home/somebody/wmf-api/includes/WebStart.php
which would be a checkout of the wmf-branch in SVN and (maybe) the
same extensions etc.
This will make it a lot easier to interact with the database when you
need certain information, this will also prevent us from hardcoding
names all the time (which I'm sure happends a lot and this is one of
the causes some tools brake over time when just small details changed).
I believe some of the toolserver users already have parts of mediawiki
in their home (I imagine stuff like GlobalFunctions.php can be very
handy at times).
Basically I'm asking three things:
* Has this been done already ? If so, we should document this better
as I spent time looking for it but came up empty
* Do we want this ? Are there potential problems here, what do we need
to tackle or fix on our side ?
* Who would want to do this ? (If nobody has plans for this already, I
would like to do this)
--
Krinkle