/wikitools

Python package for working with MediaWiki wikis

Primary LanguagePython

wikitools -- Package for working with MediaWiki wikis

Requirements

  • Python 2.5+. Not compatible with Python 3; not tested on older versions
  • Bob Ippolito's simplejson module, if using Python < 2.6 http://pypi.python.org/pypi/simplejson
  • To upload files or import XML, you need Chris AtLee's poster package http://pypi.python.org/pypi/poster
  • The wiki this is used for should be running at least MediaWiki version 1.13 and have the API enabled.

Installation

  • Run "python setup.py install" or copy the wikitools directory to an appropriate Python module directory.
  • An exe installer for Windows is also available (should be run as an administrator to avoid errors)
  • An RPM for Linux is also available.
  • Arch Linux users may use AUR package for their convenience: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/python2-wikitools/

Available modules

  • api.py - Contains the APIRequest class, for doing queries directly, see API examples below
  • wiki.py - Contains the Wiki class, used for logging in to the site, storing cookies, and storing basic site information
  • page.py - Contains the Page class for dealing with individual pages on the wiki. Can be used to get page info and text, as well as edit and other actions if enabled on the wiki
  • category.py - Category is a subclass of Page with extra functions for working with categories
  • wikifile.py - File is a subclass of Page with extra functions for working with files - note that there may be some issues with shared repositories, as the pages for files on shared repos technically don't exist on the local wiki.
  • user.py - Contains the User class for getting information about and blocking/unblocking users
  • pagelist.py - Contains several functions for getting a list of Page objects from lists of titles, pageids, or API query results

Further documentation

Current limitations

  • Can only do what the API can do. On a site without the edit-API enabled (disabled by default prior to MediaWiki 1.14), you cannot edit/delete/ protect pages, only retrieve information about them.
  • May have issues with some non-ASCII characters. Most of these bugs should be resolved, though full UTF-8 support is still a little flaky
  • Usage on restricted-access (logged-out users can't read) wikis is mostly untested

Quick start

To make a simple query:

#!/usr/bin/python

from wikitools import wiki
from wikitools import api

# create a Wiki object
site = wiki.Wiki("http://my.wikisite.org/w/api.php") 
# login - required for read-restricted wikis
site.login("username", "password")
# define the params for the query
params = {'action':'query', 'titles':'Main Page'}
# create the request object
request = api.APIRequest(site, params)
# query the API
result = request.query()

The result will look something like:

{u'query':
	{u'pages':
		{u'15580374':
			{u'ns': 0, u'pageid': 15580374, u'title': u'Main Page'}
		}
	}
}

If the API module you need requires a token, you first do something like:

params = { 'action':'query', 'meta':'tokens' }
token = api.APIRequest(site, params).query()['query']['tokens']['csrftoken']
# define the params for the query
params = { 'action':'thank', 'rev':diff, 'token':token }

For most normal usage, you may not have to do API queries yourself and can just use the various classes. For example, to add a template to the top of all the pages in namespace 0 in a category:

#!/usr/bin/python

from wikitools import wiki
from wikitools import category

site = wiki.Wiki("http://my.wikisite.org/w/api.php") 
site.login("username", "password")
# Create object for "Category:Foo"
cat = category.Category(site, "Foo")
# iterate through all the pages in ns 0
for article in cat.getAllMembersGen(namespaces=[0]):
	# edit each page
	article.edit(prependtext="{{template}}\n")

See the MediaWiki API documentation at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API for more information about using the MediaWiki API. You can get an example of what query results will look like by doing the queries in your web browser using the "jsonfm" format option

Licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 3. A copy of the license is included with this release.

Authors

  • Original source code Alex Z. (User:Mr.Z-man @ en.wikipedia) mrzmanwiki@gmail.com
  • Some code/assistance (User:Bjweeks @ en.wikipedia)