Manual:Pywikibot/Overview

The Python MediaWiki Robot Framework (Pywikibot) is a collection of tools made to fit the maintenance need on Wikipedia, but it can also be used on other MediaWiki sites.

There is the core release of the Python Wikipedia Robot Framework, formerly known as the rewrite branch. It features several improvements, such as full API usage, much more up-to-date with new MediaWiki features and a pythonic package layout.

There is a compat release (formerly 'trunk') which is old and largely based on screen-scraping that supports older mediawiki software.

It is recommended to use core instead of compat. The table below may assist in choosing between the compat and core release.

Requirements for a bot
To run a bot on your wiki, you will need Shell access to your hosting account. If you don't know whether you have Shell access or not, ask your hosting provider. You will need Python version > 2.5 and less than 3.0 although Python 2.4.3 has also worked for at least one bot script. Preferred version is 2.7.2. or higher. To check whether you have Python installed and its version, just type "python" at the Shell prompt.

License
Here you can view the LICENSE files for core and compat.

Other licenses

 * The script reflinks.py is licensed under the GPL in compat, but has been relicensed to MIT in core, with removal of code where the author has not responded to the call for the code to be relicensed.
 * pywikibot/userinterfaces/win32_unicode.py is based on code that is CC BY-SA 3.0.
 * pywikibot/backports.py consists of code from PSF, and is licensed PSF 2.0.