API:Article ideas generator

Overview
In this tutorial, you will get a demo of an article ideas generator app that suggests articles from various categories that don't yet exist on English Wikipedia.

Download the code from GitHub Browse the app on Toolforge

This tutorial will teach you how to do this using:


 * Python, Flask framework, and the Requests library
 * MediaWiki Action API's Parse and Links module

A step-by-step process of building this application:

Step 1: Set up Python and Flask development environment
To set up the Python development environment for a Flask application, you will need to install Python, create a virtual environment, and install Flask and Requests.

Learn more about the differences between Python2 and Python3 here. To install Python3 on your local machine, follow step-by-step instructions in these [ https://docs.python-guide.org/starting/installation/#python-3-installation-guides installation guides].

Here is how to set up the development environment for building the application:

Render a simple static page
Place the following code in

Drop this one line of code Article ideas generator in a HTML file inside the folder:

Next run your Flask app with the command and open  to view your app in the browser. You should be able to see " Article ideas generator " in your browser window.

Style your app
Let's do some app styling. To do so, add link tags to load an external and internal stylesheet. External stylesheet, in this case, is the URL of a CSS file for the font.

Replace the existing code in with the following:

Place the following code in

Application layout
$HOME/article-ideas-generator ├── templates/ │  └── articles.html ├── static/ │  └── style.css ├── articles.py └── venv/

Step 3: Fetch page sections from Wikipedia:Requested articles
Let's write some code in a function in  to fetch page sections from Wikipedia:Requested articles. This function takes page name as an argument and makes a request to the Action API to parse sections of the page. API call consists of an endpoint and query string parameters. Some of the key parameters are:


 * - module to parse content on a page
 * - page title to parse
 * - tells which piece of information to retrieve, in this example it is sections

Next, extend the Python Flask route in  to call the function defined above and also pass the results returned by the function to.

Place the following Jinja template code in. It dynamically renders an array of category buttons based on page sections obtained via the API above.

Place the following code in for button styling.

Step 4: Get more sections based on user selection
Based on a category or section selected by the user in the previous step, we want to fetch subsections from Wikipedia:Requested articles. Extend the Python Flask route in  to handle POST requests. You can do so by adding both and  in the  argument list in the route decorator. You can then obtain category selection available in a format from the  object, which is passed to  function for further processing.

Step 5: Collect and display articles with missing links
Let's write some code in a function in  to fetch around 20 articles with missing links on a page. This function takes page name as an argument, makes a request to the Action API, and returns all links embedded on that page. From further extraction, you can obtain those links that are missing and don't yet exist on English Wikipedia. The API call consists of an endpoint and query string parameters. Some of the key parameters are:


 * - module to query information
 * - page title to collect links
 * - query module's submodule used as a generator module to get a set of links embedded on a page
 * - number of links to fetch

Next, extend the block for the  method in the  route in  to call the  function if the page from which the request is issued is of type.

Place the following Jinja template code in. It dynamically renders a list of links using data obtained via the API above.

View the complete Python, CSS, and HTML code.

Next steps

 * Contribute a demo app that you have developed using the MediaWiki API to this [ https://github.com/wikimedia/MediaWiki-Action-API-Code-Samples code samples repository].