[Mediawiki-l] writing a bot ... directest access to articles

[Johannes Feigl]

> ok, thanks dori,
> then i will also access to via normal http.
> but the problem is, that there is a transfer of a lot of data, which are 
> not necessary, i think of the when you open a site with the source-code, 
> (e.g. 
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Berkshire_Hathaway&action=edit ) 
> you need only the source-text for the bot.
> it's only the part in the textarea
>
> i think it would be nice of you add to the index.php also the action 
> "source".
> like: "index.php?title=Wikipedia&action=edit", and you only get the 
> sourcecode of the article "Wikipedia"

sorry, i thought about "index.php?title=Wikipedia&action=source"
it could also include the hidden input arguments you get when using
"edit", could look like something like that when opening that page:

:wpSection
20051211120204:wpStarttime
20051210103959:wpEdittime
:wpScrolltop
SOURCE

the same for the action "submit".
we could also make an action called "botsubmit" which only tells an error 
code

something like
0 = ok
1 = timestamp error
2 = site is locked

i think can also write a patch for the CVS-version of mediawiki if you think 
this would be nice! i think this would be very easy and could improve the 
speed for bots
and decrease the load of the servers!

what do you think about?

mfg johannes