User talk:Reach Out to the Truth

 Dear, Welcome to MediaWiki.org !

Yes, Welcome! This site is dedicated to the documentation of the MediaWiki software, the software behind many wikis, including that of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation projects.

Please, take a look at the following pages. They might prove useful to you as a newcomer here:
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If you have any questions, please ask me on my talk page. Once again, welcome, and I hope you quickly feel comfortable here, and find this site a beneficial documentation of the MediaWiki software. Thanks, and regards, Tisane 05:47, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I was here before you. :P Reach Out to the Truth 01:26, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

XML feed
So I take it there is no XML RecentChanges feed available at this time? I know pages can be exported through Special:Export, but what I really want to do is mirror a wiki in real time by reading a continuous feed of XML-formatted recent changes. IIRC, revisions are in some sort of space-saving format that only stores the diff rather than the two different versions in their entirety. Might not XML be done the same way, and thereby save on data transfer costs? I want to propose an extension and begin work on it, if someone hasn't already implemented this functionality. Thanks, Tisane 17:59, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I would have thought it possible to get a diff from the API, but I can't seem to figure it out. Although not ideal, I suppose it is possible to use the RecentChanges feed for replication purposes. You'd have to parse the provided description to extract a usable diff out of it, but it should at least be possible. Reach Out to the Truth 13:51, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah. I submitted bug 23001 on this issue, and hopefully I got across well enough what I'm trying to accomplish. I think using XML is probably the best long-term solution. I'm not sure why OAI-PMH was too expensive. Wikimedia seems to make a fair chunk of change by selling access to its feeds (see the question on "program income") but it seems like they don't care as much about it as they used to and may not even offer it anymore; Kul didn't return my email inquiring about it. This extension looks like it's going to be a major project; I better inquire further into what happened with OAI-PMH before starting. Tisane 14:40, 30 March 2010 (UTC)