API talk:Main page

Renaming this page, front doors to the APIs
This page is no longer a Main_page for APIs (plural), it's an introduction to the MediaWiki action API, our biggest and oldest API. The next step is to rename the page to more accurately reflect its role. Already the API navigation template links to it as the "MediaWiki APIs" heading and as "Introduction and quick start" (I just now renamed the latter from "Quick start guide"). My choice is:
 * API:Introduction to the action API

which accurately if incompletely describes its content, so unless someone has a better suggestion I'll rename the page to that. API:Main_page will of course redirect to the new name.

Alternatives:
 * trimming to "API:Action API" makes the page mysterious
 * expanding "API:Introduction to the MediaWiki action API" feels unnecessarily long
 * "API:Action API introduction and quick start" is even more informative and would match its item in the API navigation template, but is too wordy. :-)

Note that for certain developers, API:Web APIs hub is a better introduction to "the APIs that let you access free open knowledge on Wikimedia wikis." Eventually I think "Web APIs hub" should be the destination of the heading MediaWiki APIs in the API navigation template.

This is part of T105133, "Organize current and new content in the API: namespace at mediawiki.org".

-- SPage (WMF) (talk) 20:50, 31 August 2015 (UTC)


 * The current aliases, as seen in the redirects. Cpiral (talk) 18:55, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Server returned HTTP response code: 500 for URL: https://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php
When I try to login to Wikidata I keep getting a 500 error. I don't have any problems with logging in to Wikipedias. --jobu0101 (talk) 20:43, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

wgWikibaseItemId from history page
Hi. I would like to retrieve the Wikidata ID of an wikipedia article from its revision history page. Command  only works from main page (it returns null from history page). Any advice or solution ? Thanks in advance. --H4stings (talk) 09:00, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
 * This is not an API question. You might be able to reach the wikidata people by filing a task or posting to their mailing list. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 18:08, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

List of all pages edited by a user
Hi, any suggestions for the following request? - How to get: - all page titles or page IDs (including or excluding older page versions) - a user X has edited yet - optionally limiting to discussion pages?

I look and tryed the API sandbox, but the query-list-allpages does not have relevant attributs.

Thank you for your help and all the best, --Liuniao (talk) 07:08, 6 July 2016 (UTC)


 * You'll probably want to look at API:Usercontribs. To limit to only discussion pages, you would need to first know the namespace IDs for all the talk namespaces, which you can get from API:Siteinfo (e.g., ). For argument's sake, let's say you have no custom namespaces on your wiki and you want to see my talk page contributions. Your ultimate query would look like this:


 * |3|5|7|9|11|13|15 ?action=query&list=usercontribs&ucuser=RobinHood70&ucnamespace=1|3|5|7|9|11|13|15


 * If you wanted only the most recent edit on each page, then you'd add |3|5|7|9|11|13|15&ucshow=top &ucshow=top to that (or use &uctoponly= if your wiki is 1.22 or older). – Robin Hood  (talk)  18:52, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

What is maximum URL length I can use with Wikipedia API ?
Sometimes I get HTTP 414 error (Request-URL Too Long) when I pass very long requests (with more than 50 page titles). I limit it roughly but I'l like to know exact limit. Anyone knows that? Нирваньчик (talk) 00:20, 17 July 2016 (UTC)


 * There's no byte limit that I'm aware of in the MediaWiki software, the limit usually comes from the servers themselves. It's often set to 8k (8192 bytes), but different servers could be using different sizes. I would hope that all the MW servers are the same, whatever that might be, but there are no guarantees. The only way to be sure would be to track sizes that succeed or fail on whichever server(s) you're using. Unless, of course, you can get in touch with a server admin and ask them to find out directly.


 * You should also be aware that there is a limit built into MediaWiki for the number of titles you can put in a single query, and that limit is typically 50 titles unless you have higher permissions (typically bot or admin permissions), in which case, it rises to 500. There are also a couple of special cases where the number is lower, but those are noted on the individual API pages. Whether it's the normal limit or a smaller one, though, you shouldn't get a 414 error from MediaWiki, it should just spit out a warning in the output. – Robin Hood  (talk)  01:36, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Question
What does API stand for?--Mr. Guye (talk) 23:27, 6 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Application Programming Interface. It's a generic computer term for how other programs can interact with yours. In this case, the API is how you can control a wiki to do things like editing pages, retrieving information, etc. – Robin Hood  (talk)  04:27, 7 April 2017 (UTC)