* Robert Leverington robert@rhl.me.uk [Wed, 17 Nov 2010 07:38:23 +0000]:
Because it provides a consistent, clean framework for making and handling requests with the potential to reduce duplication in a lot of cases. The API is not just for bots.
API is supposed to be useful for another (remote) clients. Some of my ajax calls are useful only locally and only to my own extension. Why should I expose these openly.
Adding an API module is fairly trivial and is the correct way to
provide
AJAX interactivity.
In some cases it's unneeded complication, where you have to build the tables of parameter types, parameter descriptions and so on. And also expose all of that functionality in api.php help.
I use both API and wgAjaxExportList[], for different purposes. I may completely switch to API, however that doesn't look nice to me. But anyway, you decide. Dmitriy