API:Client code

This page is part of the MediaWiki API documentation.

MediaWiki API

Quick overview:

• Quick start guide
• FAQ
  • Etiquette and usage limits
• Tutorial
• Formats
• Error reporting
• Restricting usage
• Cross-site requests
• Authentication
  • Login
  • Logout
  • Account creation
• Queries
  • Meta information
  • Properties
  • Lists
• Search suggestions
• Parsing wikitext and expanding templates
• Purging pages' caches
• Parameter information
• Changing wiki content
  • Create and edit pages
  • Move pages
  • Rollback
  • Delete pages
  • Restore deleted revisions
  • (Un)protect pages
  • (Un)block users
  • (Un)watch pages
  • Mark revisions of watched pages as visited
  • Send email
  • Patrol changes
  • Import pages
  • Change user group membership
  • Upload files
  • User options
  • Tokens
  • Page language
• Watchlist feed
• Wikidata
• Extensions
• Using the API in MediaWiki and extensions
• Miscellaneous
• Implementation
• Client code
• Asserting

API Access Libraries

Notes to library developers

• Please use GZip compression when making API calls (Accept-Encoding: gzip).
  

Bots eat up a lot of bandwidth, which is not free.

• You must set a descriptive User Agent header (User-Agent: User name/email/framework/...)
  

Please include your username and wiki or email address.

• You should attempt to minimize the number of API calls by asking for multiple items in one request. Use titles=PageA|PageB|PageC and get all the needed lists and properties at the same time. Only ask for what you actually need.
• We are planning to migrate to JSON-only API, removing all other formats like XML, YAML, and PHP.
• When querying, use the new continue parameter. (March 2013)

Bash

• See API:Client_code/Bash. Requires curl package.Smallman12q (talk) 00:02, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Make sure to add your email address to the User-Agent line.

C++

No updates after May 2013:

• libmediawiki. There is a tutorial in KDE TechBase. Last updated Aug 2013.

Clojure

No updates after May 2013:

• cloki Last updated in 2010.

Common Lisp

No updates after May 2013:

• cl-mediawiki is a Common Lisp wrapper for the mediawiki API. It is available as a direct download, or (more conveniently) via quicklisp. Last updated in 2012.

Delphi/Object Pascal

No updates after May 2013:

• MediaWiki API Wrapper, based on ICS open-source sockets, with synchronous and asynchronous (event based) requests, requires the JEDI Code Library for dependencies. Last updated in 2012.

Go

• go-mediawiki Go wrapper for the MediaWiki API
• go-mwclient another Go wrapper for the MediaWiki API (supports maxlag)

Haskell

• http://hackage.haskell.org/package/mediawiki

Java

• Bliki Engine - Java Wikipedia API - very complete. Can convert wikicode to HTML, DocBook or PDF. Has a helper library for API calls.
• JavaWikiBotFramework - a Java library that makes almost all API functions accessible. On github: https://github.com/eldur/jwbf.
• Wiki.java — a simple one-class API implementation
• WPCleaner — a Java editing tool that includes a package for MediaWiki API.

No updates since May 2013:

• java-mwapi
• MediaWiki-Java-API
• Java Wikipedia Library

JavaScript

• https://github.com/macbre/nodemw - Node.js client, actively maintained as of May 2014.
• mediawiki.api.js - A module that ships with MediaWiki core, abstracts a handful of API calls into simple one liners (uses jQuery.ajax internally).
• mediawiki-js (npm) Ultra-light, vanilla JavaScript wrapper of Mediawiki API for use in the browser
• Node.js MediaWiki module - A JavaScript framework of standard requests (e.g. log in, log out, read, edit, etc.) as well as a general wrapper method. Includes some helpful stuff like throttling.
• WikiJS - a simple node.js library that serves as an interface to MediaWiki

No updates since May 2013:

• wikifetch
• mwapilib2 - A layer overtop of the requests. Make JS gadgets easier. Updated 2012.
• JsMwApi A convenience wrapper around raw requests, with some helpers for editing and parsing.

.NET

• AutoWikiBrowser's WikiFunctions library has classes for editing and getting lists of pages via the API. See ApiEdit
• DotNetWikiBot Framework - written in C#, based on Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5 (Tutorial)
• MorebitsDotNet contains C# code for uploading files through the API.
• LinqToWiki, strongly typed library for accessing most of MediaWiki API, with support for autocompletion

No updates after May 2013:

• WikiAccess - a C#-library that makes some API functions accessible, has write API. Last updated April 2013.

OCaml

No updates after May 2013:

• ocaml-mediawiki Last updated in 2012.

Perl

• MediaWiki::Bot - A higher-level Perl module with read and write functions. Easily extensible with plugins, for example to provide administrator functions. Updated Jan 2014.
  • source code on Github
  • Client scripts (As of May 2014, last updated in 2010)

No updates after May 2013:

• MediaWiki::API - A Perl module for interfacing with the MediaWiki API with file upload/download and editing support. (Debian package).
• CMS-MediaWiki Perl extension for fetching, creating and updating MediaWiki pages. Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/CMS-MediaWiki/lib/CMS/MediaWiki.pm
• Perl MediaWiki API - An open source Perl module wrapping many of the MediaWiki API functions.

PHP

There are many PHP frameworks for the api, see here for a full list and comparison of frameworks.

• Apibot - a modular, somewhat ambitious bot with overlayed UNIX-like framework
• wikibase-api - Library for querying Wikidata, actively maintained as of May 2014.
• wikidrain - A wrapper for the WikiMedia API centralized around easily and simply querying Wikipedia articles. (Still actively being developed as of April 2014)
• MediaWiki_Api - A simple PHP curl based API wrapper with basic functionality. Almost completely undocumented.
• Wikimate - Gets and edits MediaWiki pages.

No updates after May 2013:

• SxWiki - a lightweight, simple MediaWiki bot framework. (Unmaintained since 2008)

Python

• Pywikibot - A collection of python scripts. Seems up to date (Nov 2013) (IRC)(Evaluation)
• mwclient - A Python library that makes most of the API functions accessible. (PyPI)(Evaluation)
• wikitools - Provides several layers of abstraction around the API. Should be up to date (PyPI) (Evaluation)
• simplemediawiki - A simple, no-abstraction interface to the API. Handles cookies and other extremely basic things. Python 2.6+ and 3.3+ compatible. Docs at http://pythonhosted.org/simplemediawiki/ .(PyPI) (Evaluation)
• Wikipedia -  A Python library that makes it easy to access and parse data from Wikipedia. (PyPI)
• python-mwapi - A simple wrapper around the Mediawiki API, meant to closely mirror its interface (PyPI)
• supersimplemediawiki - Similar to simplemediawiki, but does not handle tokens or compression.
• Pattern, [1] - web mining module, has classes for handling MediaWiki API requests, handles continuations
• ceterach - Python3 library, fully PEP8 compliant.

R

• WikipediR - a read-only API wrapper.

Ruby

• mediawiki/ruby/api, https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/admin/projects/mediawiki/ruby/api - Ruby API client library in active development as of April 2014
• wikipedia-client - Ruby framework using the API.
• MediaWiki::Gateway - Ruby framework for the API. Maintained, tested up to MediaWiki 1.22, compatible with Wikimedia wikis. Has not been in active development since 2012.
• Sunflower - Provides Ruby access to MediaWiki API; can be used as a base for more sophisticated bots or as standalone by beginners

No updates after May 2013:

• RWikiBot - a Ruby framework using the API. No releases since 2008.
• rbmediawiki - Another Ruby framework that uses the API. No releases since 2009.
• mediawikiclient - No releases since 2007
• wikipedia-api - No releases since 2008

Comparing clients

API:Client code/Gold standard describes best practices for web API client libraries.

A support-matrix of many of the actively developed packages from this page for some of the more used API features can be found on the Wikia API Wiki. (19 May 2014; note this has not been updated since 2011.)

See Also

• Collection of bot libraries on Wikipedia, several of these use the API.