API

I was not able to find a list of suggested API functions for retrieving Information via SOAP/WHATEVER. If you find one that already exists, please delete this page. If you consider meta inappropriete for this kind of page, please delete it. Or move it to my user name subpage. If you feel offended by the pseudo-syntax or naming of these functions, alter them unless they are beyond repair. Thanks.

Data Retrieval

Articles

article_mw ( string lemma )

article_mw() returns a single article from a wiki in the original Mediawiki syntax

article_xml ( string lemma )

article_xml returns a single article from a wiki in xml output

article_section_mw ( string lemma, int section)

returns a single section from a single article from a wiki in the original mediawiki syntax. section is the same as section in the edit option

Search

list of articles that contain string query
size of an article (chars, bytes, words)
list of authors of an article (ugly to compute when it comes to articles with 1000+ revisions)

Wikimania API discussion

A simple-as-possible API was quickly designed at the Wikimania Hacking Days on 4 August 2006. This minimal API only supports the most essential functions, with the goal of allowing a quick implementation, with other functionality (moving pages, uploading images, etc.) to be specified once a basic API has been implemented.

Essential functions

login: in: username, password, (API key); out: success, authentication failure, or temporary failure

read revision: in: article title, revision ID, or page ID; out: A format mostly identical to the current special:export, but also including some metadata about whether the page is a redirect, and the page to redirect to, so that the client does not need to parse the wikitext

read history

in: article title or page ID, range start, +- limit

range can be ISO date or revision ID. if negative range start, fetch last limit revisions bounded by some maximum of revisions: currently 5000

always return up to 5000 revisions

out: export xml metadata (see readrevision)

write article: in: last revision ID or 0 (if the page is new), page text, page title, comment, minor; out: success(versionID), edit conflict fail, permission failure, temp failure

Notes

Date format: UTC only, ISO 8601; Date = 0 means the current revision