Hi everyone,
We regularly get feedback that Wikidata (and Wikibase in general) needs an
API that’s easier to understand and use in order to get more people to
build tools that use data from Wikidata and other Wikibase instances. The
existing action API has several problems. The biggest ones are that it’s
not a widely used standard, not versioned and that it is not very well
suited for Wikibase’ structured data (as opposed to MediaWiki’s usual
wikitext). Over the last weeks we’ve looked at ways to improve the
situation and have come up with a draft for a REST API for Wikibase. We’d
love to have your feedback on it.
*What we want to achieve with it:*
- Provide a more industry-standard and versioned way to access and
manipulate data in Wikibase. This will make it easier for programmers to
get started building tools with and around Wikidata and other Wikibase
instances.
- Provide an API that is more tailored to the Wikibase data model to,
for example, make it possible to get exactly the part of an Entity you need
instead of the whole entity.
- Solve a number of issues in the current API that are easier to solve
with REST.
*A few things to keep in mind:*
- This is only touching the Wikibase-specific API modules, not any of
the others that MediaWiki provides.
- We’ve started with the specification around Items and Properties. Once
we are sure the direction is good, we will look at other parts of the data
model and content like Lexemes and MediaInfo.
- For existing users of the action API: Nothing changes for you for now.
If the feedback is positive, and we go ahead, it’ll take us some time to
actually implement the proposed changes. It’d be very important for us to
hear your feedback now to ensure that the new API meets your needs in the
future.
If you are building tools around and on top of Wikidata/Wikibase, please
have a look at the draft and give us your feedback. You can find all the
information at Wikidata:REST API
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:REST_API>. Please leave your
feedback on the talk page there, so we have it all in one place.
Thank you!
--
Mohammed Sadat
*Community Communications Manager for Wikidata/Wikibase*
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24
10963 Berlin
www.wikimedia.de