Russell Blau wrote:
"Brion Vibber" brion@wikimedia.org wrote in message news:48AC45CE.8060308@wikimedia.org...
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Ilmari Karonen wrote:
Brion Vibber wrote:
Robert Ullmann wrote:
Quite so. However, it doesn't. And a *very* large amount of stuff is built on it. Would be good to fix it. Before changing the UI it relies on.
Question: How would the people maintaining it have known that it was going to be broken this morning?
They have known for the past SEVERAL YEARS that UI COMPONENTS FREQUENTLY CHANGE and they should use MACHINE-READABLE APIS, as they have been told repeatedly OVER THE YEARS.
...so where's the edit API?
Why is an edit API needed for reading a list of page names? Oh wait, it isn't! :)
That, of course, is not the point at all. The point is, why invest large amounts of time and effort in developing a bot framework to use an API that isn't yet complete?
I've been using the read API for at least a year, in a custom framework of my own design. It's easier to use than screen-scraping, uses less bandwidth for both the host and, client, it's stable, and it's faster. There's every reason in the world to use it, including that you don't have to worry about the UI changing by surprise at 3AM.
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