On 07/08/14 02:37, MZMcBride wrote:
A quick count at https://www.mediawiki.org/w/api.php says that there are currently 52 &list=foo entries and 83 &action=foo entries. While these numbers are inflated due to installed extensions, I'm hesitant to present the MediaWiki Web API as an action API. Though you could perhaps argue that listing is just another action.
Like Daniel said, what you call "listing" is actually the query action.
I tend to agree with the view of others in this thread that simply saying "the [{MediaWiki (core), Web}] API" is usually sufficiently clear.
Note that Nemo bis changed the name from "MediaWiki API" to "WebAPI" on the basis of disambiguation, in this revision:
https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=API:Main_page&diff=644948&am...
I have previously suggested "web API" as a term to distinguish it from the set of PHP classes and hooks used by extensions. API stands for application programmer interface, and traditionally refers to functions and classes -- using the term for a non-RPC HTTP interface is really rather awkward.
Neither "MediaWiki API" nor "Web API" distinguishes it from the proposed REST API. For someone using api.php every day, "the API" is clear enough, but if you are a mobile developer using the REST API every day, you need some other term to specify api.php.
-- Tim Starling