Hello all,
We recently made some changes to the way the Wikidata Query Service UI (
https://query.wikidata.org/) loads the example queries
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:SPARQL_query_service/queries/examples>.
This change can impact people who are maintaining these queries, as well as
people running their own Wikibase instance including the Query Service.
Before the change, our approach was to get the HTML of that wiki page from
Parsoid <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid> (this includes some
template metadata which the normal parser output doesn’t include), and from
that extract the query parameters of all {{SPARQL}} and {{SPARQL2}}
transclusions.
With our improved approach, we get the HTML of that wiki page from the
parser <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Parsing_wikitext>, and from that
extract the contents of all syntax highlighted blocks.
The improvements resulting from this change are the following:
-
The queries no longer have to be specified directly on the page using
{{SPARQL}} or {{SPARQL2}}; they can be transcluded indirectly, e.
g. using {{query
page}}
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Template:Query_page#Transclusion_usage>.
You can see a comparison at
User:TweetsFactsAndQueries/Queries-test-transclude
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:TweetsFactsAndQueries/Queries-test-transclude>
and User:TweetsFactsAndQueries/Queries-test-copy
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:TweetsFactsAndQueries/Queries-test-copy>.
If we go with the solution of one query per page, we should be aware that
we can fit less queries on the examples page before we hit some parser
limits.
-
Examples can be loaded from wikis that don’t have Parsoid / VisualEditor
installed, making it much easier for third-party setups to manage their own
lists of examples.
-
Queries that contained an unescaped pipe character (|) were previously
cut off at that character in the query service UI, this should now be fixed
and all queries should be displayed just like on the wikipage.
-
If the examples page hits some limit of the parser, then some examples
will not be loaded, whereas with the previous approach they would still be
loaded and shown on the query service UI even though they weren’t working
correctly on the wiki page.
Configuration changes for other Wikibase instances: third-party setups may
have to update their configuration (custom-config.json). In the 'examples'
object, the 'endpoint' (pointing to the REST API for Parsoid) has been
replaced with the 'apiPath' (the path to api.php after the 'server';
related to $wgScriptPath
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgScriptPath>, but without a
leading slash [should instead be at the end of the 'server'] and including
the /api.php at the end).
If you encounter any issues with the examples page or while configuring
your own Query Service instance, please let us know by adding a comment under
this task <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T174298>.
Cheers,
--
Léa Lacroix
Project Manager Community Communication for Wikidata
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24
10963 Berlin
www.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207.