Introduction to technical

Wikimedia world, MediaWiki and

bots

Toni Hermoso Pulido

@toniher

Amical Wikimedia

Wiki

Wikipedia

Wikimedia

MediaWiki

Wiki CMS

Built mostly in:

• PHP
• JavaScript

https://www.mediawiki.org

Working with Docker

https://docker.com/

Getting started with Docker

Docker images used

https://github.com/toniher/docker-SemanticMediaWiki

https://github.com/toniher/docker-debian-python-mediawiki

We build the one above following README instructions, modifying Bash scripts and Dockerfile if desired

We can build this one as well. Alternately we can reuse it from:

https://hub.docker.com/r/toniher/debian-python-mediawiki/

However you need to mount example scripts provided in the repo above

Wikitext

• Original content type
• Nowadays also other content types accepted

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikitext

ContentHandler

Namespaces

• Main

• Talk

• User

• Category

• Template

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Namespace

Templates

MediaWiki functions

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Templates

Templates

Ordered parameters

{{MyTemplate | Hello | World }}

{{{1|Hi}}}, {{{2|Moon}}} !

Template:MyTemplate

Templates

Named parameters

{{MyNamedTemplate | greeting=Hello | recipient=World }}

Template:MyNamedTemplate

{{{greeting|Hi}}}, {{{recipient|Moon}}} !

Parser functions

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:ParserFunctions

{{#parser: param1 | param2 | ... }}

Parser functions

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:ParserFunctions

Examples

• expr (simple maths)
• if, switch (conditionals)
• time (time format)

Parser functions

Custom ones

(via extensions)

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Extensions

Modules

Extending parser functions to everyone (now with Lua)

Example, for citation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module:Citation

Scribunto

Special Pages

Managing MediaWiki

Special:SpecialPages

https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:SpecialPages

Bots

The hidden ones

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Bots

MediaWiki API

Accessing MediaWiki programatically

https://ca.wikipedia.org/w/api.php

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page

MediaWiki API clients / libraries

• Perl (MediaWiki::API, MediaWiki::Bot)

• Python (Mwclient, Pywikibot)

• JavaScript (nodemw)

• etc.

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Client_code

Mwclient

A MediaWiki API Python client library

http://mwclient.readthedocs.io/en/master/

RESTBase

A sophisticated Wikipedia REST API

https://ca.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/

Semantic MediaWiki

A wiki-based annotation database

https://www.semantic-mediawiki.org

Semantic MediaWiki

Property :: Value

Germany

[[Has capital::Berlin]] is its capital. It has a population of [[Has population::81292400|more than 8 milions]].

Property:Has capital

Property:Has population

[[Has type::Page]].

[[Has type::Number]].

Semantic MediaWiki

Querying

Special:Ask