prototyping-times/mediawiki-api-part-2.ipynb

MediaWiki API (part 2)¶

This notebook:

• continues with exploring the connections between Hypertext & Dérive
• uses the query & parse actions of the MediaWiki API, which we can use to work with wiki pages as (versioned and hypertextual) technotexts

Epicpedia¶

Reference: Epicpedia (2008), Annemieke van der Hoek \ (from: https://diversions.constantvzw.org/wiki/index.php?title=Eventual_Consistency#Towards_diffractive_technotexts)

In Epicpedia (2008), Annemieke van der Hoek creates a work that makes use of the underlying history that lies beneath the surface of each Wikipedia article.[20] Inspired by the work of Berthold Brecht and the notion of Epic Theater, Epicpedia presents Wikipedia articles as screenplays, where each edit becomes an utterance performed by a cast of characters (both major and minor) that takes place over a span of time, typically many years. The work uses the API of wikipedia to retrieve for a given article the sequence of revisions, their corresponding user handles, the summary message (that allows editors to describe the nature of their edit), and the timestamp to then produce a differential reading.

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import urllib
import json
from IPython.display import JSON # iPython JSON renderer

Query & Parse¶

We will work again with the Dérive page on the wiki: https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/D%C3%A9rive (i moved it here, to make the URL a bit simpler)

And use the API help page on the PZI wiki as our main reference: https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/api.php

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# query the wiki page Dérive
request = 'https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/api.php?action=query&titles=D%C3%A9rive&format=json'
response = urllib.request.urlopen(request).read()
data = json.loads(response)

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JSON(data)

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# parse the wiki page Dérive
request = 'https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/api.php?action=parse&page=D%C3%A9rive&format=json'
response = urllib.request.urlopen(request).read()
data = json.loads(response)

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JSON(data)

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Links, contributors, edit history¶

We can ask the API for different kind of material/information about the page.

Such as:

• a list of wiki links
• a list of external links
• a list of images
• a list of edits
• a list of contributors
• page information
• reverse links (What links here?)
• ...

We can use the query action again, to ask for these things:

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# wiki links: prop=links
request = 'https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/api.php?action=query&prop=links&titles=D%C3%A9rive&format=json'
response = urllib.request.urlopen(request).read()
data = json.loads(response)
JSON(data)

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# external links: prop=extlinks
request = 'https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/api.php?action=query&prop=extlinks&titles=D%C3%A9rive&format=json'
response = urllib.request.urlopen(request).read()
data = json.loads(response)
JSON(data)

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# images: prop=images
request = 'https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/api.php?action=query&prop=images&titles=D%C3%A9rive&format=json'
response = urllib.request.urlopen(request).read()
data = json.loads(response)
JSON(data)

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# edit history: prop=revisions
request = 'https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&titles=D%C3%A9rive&format=json'
response = urllib.request.urlopen(request).read()
data = json.loads(response)
JSON(data)

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# contributors: prop=contributors
request = 'https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/api.php?action=query&prop=contributors&titles=D%C3%A9rive&format=json'
response = urllib.request.urlopen(request).read()
data = json.loads(response)
JSON(data)

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# page information: prop=info
request = 'https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/api.php?action=query&prop=info&titles=D%C3%A9rive&format=json'
response = urllib.request.urlopen(request).read()
data = json.loads(response)
JSON(data)

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# reverse links (What links here?): prop=linkshere + lhlimit=25 (max. nr of results)
request = 'https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/api.php?action=query&prop=linkshere&lhlimit=100&titles=Prototyping&format=json'
response = urllib.request.urlopen(request).read()
data = json.loads(response)
JSON(data)

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Use the data responses in Python (and save data in variables)¶

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# For example with the action=parse request
request = 'https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/api.php?action=parse&page=D%C3%A9rive&format=json'
response = urllib.request.urlopen(request).read()
data = json.loads(response)
JSON(data)

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text = data['parse']['text']['*']
print(text)

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title = data['parse']['title']
print(title)

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images = data['parse']['images']
print(images)

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Use these variables to generate HTML pages¶

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# open a HTML file to write to 
output = open('myfilename.html', 'w')

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# write to this HTML file you just opened
output.write(text)

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2813

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# close the file again (Jupyter needs this to actually write a file)
output.close()

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Use these variables to generate HTML pages (using the template language Jinja)¶

Jinja (template language): https://jinja.palletsprojects.com/

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