API:Client code

Client libraries contain code that developers can use to help with common and basic tasks, so that they don't have to write the code from scratch when their projects interact with an API.

This page contains a set of lists, by language, of up-to three recommended client libraries that can be used with the MediaWiki Action API. The recommendations are based on evaluations using API:Client_code/Gold_standard .

New and/or unevaluated libraries should be added to API:Client_code/All .

API client libraries

Last activity refers to the last commit in the repository.
Dates and version numbers were updated on 2019-06-19.

Awk

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
BotWikiAwk	Framework and libraries for creating bots. Includes example bots.			27 March 2019(2019-03-27)
Wikiget	Awk CLI program to interface with MediaWiki API for read/write including OAuth.			8 June 2019(2019-06-08)

C++

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
libmediawiki	A library that allows easy editing of a wiki through the MediaWiki API.			9 September 2017(2017-09-09)

Common Lisp

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
cl-mediawiki	A Common Lisp wrapper for the Mediawiki API.			10 November 2016(2016-11-10)

Go

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
go-mediawiki	Go wrapper for the MediaWiki API.	v0.1	4 November 2013(2013-11-04)	8 February 2017(2017-02-08)
go-mwclient	Wrapper for the MediaWiki API (supports maxlag, query continuations, OAuth).	1.0.3	3 August 2018(2018-08-03)	3 August 2018(2018-08-03)

Haskell

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
haskell mediawiki	A complete Haskell binding to the MediaWiki API letting you programmatically access (read and write) MediaWiki content.	0.2.6	20 November 2013(2013-11-20)	20 November 2013(2013-11-20)

Java

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
JavaWikiBotFramework	A library to retrieve data from and maintain MediaWiki-based wikis such as Wikipedia.	4.0.0	13 September 2016(2016-09-13)	15 February 2019(2019-02-15)
jwiki	A library for effortlessly interacting with Wikipedia/MediaWiki.	1.8.0	14 April 2020(2020-04-14)	6 May 2020(2020-05-06)
Bliki Engine	Can convert wikicode to HTML, DocBook or PDF. Has a helper library for API calls.			27 April 2019(2019-04-27)

More Java libraries available at API:Client_code/All#Java.

JavaScript

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
mwbot (Node.js)	MWBot uses the Promise pattern and other ES6 methodologies, optimised for creating bots that make edits. Works with any MediaWiki site.	v1.0.10	30 October 2017(2017-10-30)	20 February 2019(2019-02-20)
nodemw (Node.js)	A generic MediaWiki API client for Node.js.	v0.12.2	16 September 2018(2018-09-16)	16 September 2018(2018-09-16)
mediawiki.api (browser)	Generic MediaWiki API client for client-side JavaScript. It ships with MediaWiki core as a ResourceLoader module bundle. It abstracts some high-level concepts and provides a generic client for other queries.	Maintained as part of MediaWiki.

In-wiki JavaScript clients:

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
mwapilib2	A layer overtop of the requests. Make JS gadgets easier.			25 September 2016(2016-09-25)
JsMwApi	A convenience wrapper around raw requests, with some helpers for editing and parsing.			11 June 2014(2014-06-11)

More JavaScript libraries available at API:Client_code/All#JavaScript.

Lua

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
mediawikiapi	Makes query (tokens, userinfo), clientlogin, upload, and logout calls. It handles HTTPS requests and cookies and can be used to upload files to Wikimedia Commons.			20 September 2018(2018-09-20)

MATLAB

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
MatWiki	A preliminary (as of Feb 2019) MATLAB R2016b(9.1.x) client supporting just bot-logins & semantic #ask queries.	v1.0.0	19 February 2019(2019-02-19)	19 February 2019(2019-02-19)

.NET

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
WikiFunctions	Library with classes for editing and getting lists of pages via the API, used by AutoWikiBrowser.	6.0.0.1	15 September 2018(2018-09-15)	16 June 2019(2019-06-16)
LinqToWiki	Strongly typed library for accessing most of MediaWiki API, with support for autocompletion.	1.5.0	7 May 2015(2015-05-07)	7 May 2015(2015-05-07)
WikiClientLibrary	A .NET Standard & asynchronous MediaWiki API client library for wiki sites. The library also supports Flow/Wikibase/Wikia-specific API.	v0.7.0-int.7	16 November 2019(2019-11-16)	16 November 2019(2019-11-16)

More .NET libraries available at API:Client_code/All#.NET.

OCaml

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
ocaml-mediawiki	A high-level binding for the MediaWiki API written in OCaml.			29 August 2012(2012-08-29)

Perl

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
MediaWiki::Bot	A higher-level Perl module with read and write functions. Easily extensible with plugins, for example to provide administrator functions (Evaluation). source code on Github.	5.006003	7 July 2016(2016-07-07)	7 July 2016(2016-07-07)
MediaWiki::API	A Perl module for interfacing with the MediaWiki API with file upload/download and editing support. (Debian package). (Evaluation).	0.41	13 November 2015(2015-11-13)	13 November 2015(2015-11-13)

PHP

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
mediawiki-api-base	Library for basic MediaWiki api use.	2.4.0	2 November 2017(2017-11-02)	9 July 2019(2019-07-09)
mediawiki-api	A simple library for interacting with the MediaWiki API.	0.7.2	20 November 2017(2017-11-20)	6 April 2019(2019-04-06)
wikibase-api	Library for querying Wikidata.	0.7	4 July 2016(2016-07-04)	17 August 2018(2018-08-17)

More PHP libraries available at API:Client_code/All#PHP.

Sometimes people try to use these kind of libraries to access a MediaWiki installation on the same server. This is often unnecessary because MediaWiki itself is written in PHP, especially when the only purpose of the script is interacting with MediaWiki. By require'ing WebStart.php (MW_INSTALL_PATH may need to be set beforehand, see Manual:$IP), a script gets access to MediaWiki components and consequently it can call the API internally or use other MediaWiki classes and functions directly, which greatly reduces server load.

Python

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
Pywikibot	A collection of python scripts and a powerful library for bot writing.(Git repository) (IRC) (Evaluation).	4.3.0	2 September 2020(2020-09-02)	13 September 2020(2020-09-13)
mwclient	Python library that makes most of the API functions accessible. (PyPI) (Evaluation).	0.9.3	23 November 2018(2018-11-23)	10 June 2019(2019-06-10)
wiki-scripts	Framework for writing bots, maintenance scripts or performing data analysis.	1.2	31 December 2017(2017-12-31)	13 June 2019(2019-06-13)

Simple Python wrappers for no-abstraction interfaces to the MediaWiki API and basic session handling:

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
pywikiapi	A minimalistic library that handles some of the core MediaWiki API complexities like handling continuations, login, errors, and warnings, but does not impose any additional abstraction layers.	1.3.2	13 April 2019(2019-04-13)	13 April 2019(2019-04-13)
Wikipedia	A Python library that makes it easy to access and parse data from Wikipedia.	v1.1	24 December 2013(2013-12-24)	11 November 2016(2016-11-11)
wikitools	Provides several layers of abstraction around the API. Doesn't support Python 3.	0.41	7 June 2015(2015-06-07)	28 August 2016(2016-08-28)

More Python libraries available at API:Client_code/All#Python.

R

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
WikipediR	A wrapper for the MediaWiki API, aimed particularly at the Wikimedia 'production' wikis, such as Wikipedia. Can be used to retrieve page text, information about users or the history of pages, and elements of the category tree.	1.5.0	15 February 2017(2017-02-15)	15 February 2017(2017-02-15)

Ruby

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
MediaWiki::Butt	Stable and powerful Ruby framework for the API. (Evaluation)	3.0.0	19 October 2017(2017-10-19)	3 January 2019(2019-01-03)
wikipedia-client	Ruby framework using the API.	v1.10.0	5 March 2018(2018-03-05)	5 March 2018(2018-03-05)
Mediawiki Ruby API	Ruby API client library in active development by Wikimedia Foundation Release Engineering.	0.71	31 January 2017(2017-01-31)	5 December 2017(2017-12-05)

More Ruby libraries available at API:Client_code/All#Ruby.

Rust

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
Wikibase RS	Rust library to talk to the Wikibase API and serialize data into Rust data structures.	0.37	19 June 2019(2019-06-19)	19 June 2019(2019-06-19)
mediawiki_rust	A MediaWiki client library in Rust.			23 June 2019(2019-06-23)

More Rust libraries available at API:Client_code/All#Rust.

Scala

Name	Description	Last release	Release date	Last activity
scalawiki	MediaWiki client in Scala.	0.6.0	29 May 2019(2019-05-29)	23 June 2019(2019-06-23)
dbpedia extraction framework	Data extraction framework for DBpedia with support Wiki source retrived via MediaWiki API.	DBpedia_2015-10	25 July 2016(2016-07-25)	13 April 2019(2019-04-13)
scmw	Simple MediaWiki API wrapper for needs of Commonist image upload tool.	v-0.140.0	22 December 2017(2017-12-22)	22 December 2017(2017-12-22)

See also

• API:Client_code/All — All known API client libraries.
• API:Client_code/Gold_standard — Describes best practices for action API client libraries.
• Collection of bot libraries on Wikipedia, several of these use the API.
• mediawiki-api-demos — Demo apps and code snippets in Python and JavaScript demonstrating how to use various modules of the MediaWiki Action API.