API:Search and discovery

Core MediaWiki together with extensions provide several search capabilities. The Search and Discovery team maintains and enhances them.

api.php
The MediaWiki web has several search-related modules. You can make requests and view generated help at any wiki's /w/api.php entry point, or fill in API request parameters at Special:ApiSandbox.

Search modules

 * action=opensearch
 * See API:Opensearch. Returns search results in OpenSearch format, each with text extract  on Wikimedia projects.   View generated API help


 * action=languagesearch
 * Search for language names in any script. View generated API help

Query list submodules
These return a list of wiki pages matching the search criteria, and some additional information. Furthermore, you can use each as a generator to provide many other  Properties of the set of returned pages, such as a lead image, snippet, and/or page description.


 * action= list=prefixsearch
 * This merely returns wiki page titles with the given prefix. See Showcase article  Page info in search results.  View generated API help.


 * action=query list=search
 * See API:Search page. The main search interface, on Wikimedia wikis it provides search results from CirrusSearch, it can return typical search result information such as text snippets and page size.   View generated API help


 * action=query list=geosearch
 * See showcase article Showing nearby wiki information.  View generated API help.

Wikidata Query Service
Under development, maybe through api.php
 * currently       on labs only

Cirrus search API
maybe a dedicated Cirrus Search API.

Wikidata
Another axis for search results is to query the Wikidata "Q" item associated with a page. For example, the Albert Einstein article has item  "Q937" (available to the JavaScript on the wiki page via  ). Given the item, you can query the wikidata wiki for, e.g.  to get language-independent information about this item. Continuing this example, https://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=wbgetclaims&entity=Q937

You can also query for  to get basic entity information such as the   of the concept in the local language (although this is available by querying any local wiki page for   so you don't have to issue a query to wikidata). For example, https://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=wbgetentities&ids=Q937 returns the  of "German-American physicist and founder of the theory of relativity"