[Mediawiki-api] Search query returns missing pages

[roan.kattouw at home.nl]

---- Simon Lehmann <simon.lehmann at gmx.de> schrijft: 
> I am not quite sure if "no id and missing" is indicating a deleted page.
The "missing" attribute definitely indicates a non-existent page. That convention is followed throughout the API.

> If I send a query with a title that never existed it also returns a page
> without an id and is marked as missing, so it can't be distinguished
> from a deleted page (or vice versa).
The distinction between deleted pages and pages that never existed does not exist in MediaWiki (for people who don't have the right to view deleted revisions, that is). Pages either exist right now, or they don't.

> But my point was, as you have already said, that by default it shouldn't
> return missing pages at all, no matter if they never have existed or
> don't exist anymore. 
It's probably a good idea to drop missing pages. The reason they show up at all is that Wikipedia uses a search extension called Lucene, which is kind of slow on the uptake. This means recently deleted pages are only periodically removed from the search index. The standard MW search doesn't have this "bug".

Roan Kattouw (Catrope)