(apologies for cross-posting)

This announcement is significant for Wikidata API users.

As a follow-up to the recent improvements we made to the Special:NewLexeme page (see the previous announcement) we introduced a new search profile that will prioritize Items representing languages in the Lexeme language input. This will allow editors to more easily find the correct Item for the language of a Lexeme they are creating.

Users of the wbsearchentities Action API module can use a new parameter, "profile", to select the search profile to use. The default value, "default", is equivalent to the previous behavior of the API, and should be suitable for most purposes. The "language" profile can be used to search for Items representing languages, as it will prioritize these Items as results. The wbsearch submodule of the query Action API module also gains this parameter (called "wbsprofile", or "gwbsprofile" when wbsearch is being used as a generator), with the same allowed values and meaning. The new parameter is optional, so most API users should not need to update their code; users who use the API to search for language Items can add "profile=language" to their request parameters.

New profiles may be added in future without additional significant change announcements, though we will likely mention them in the weekly summary and other channels as appropriate. As with any Action API module, the valid values of the "profile" parameter may be discovered via the "help" or "paraminfo" modules, and the values will have documentation messages explaining what the profile can be used for.

The new parameter is already available on Test Wikidata, though the two profiles will produce the same search results there. It will become available on Wikidata on Thursday, 28 July 2022.

If you have feedback or questions please let us know on this phabricator ticket.

Cheers