MediaWiki API help
This is an auto-generated MediaWiki API documentation page.
Documentation and examples: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API
Main module
- Source: MediaWiki
- License: GPL-2.0+
Status: All features shown on this page should be working, but the API is still in active development, and may change at any time. Subscribe to the mediawiki-api-announce mailing list for notice of updates.
Erroneous requests: When erroneous requests are sent to the API, an HTTP header will be sent with the key "MediaWiki-API-Error" and then both the value of the header and the error code sent back will be set to the same value. For more information see API: Errors and warnings.
Testing: For ease of testing API requests, see Special:ApiSandbox.
- action
Which action to perform.
- One of the following values: block, changeauthenticationdata, checktoken, clearhasmsg, clientlogin, compare, createaccount, cspreport, delete, edit, emailuser, expandtemplates, feedcontributions, feedrecentchanges, feedwatchlist, filerevert, help, imagerotate, import, linkaccount, login, logout, managetags, mergehistory, move, opensearch, options, paraminfo, parse, patrol, protect, purge, query, removeauthenticationdata, resetpassword, revisiondelete, rollback, rsd, setnotificationtimestamp, setpagelanguage, smpuserprivacy, stashedit, tag, tokens, unblock, undelete, unlinkaccount, upload, userrights, validatepassword, watch
- Default: help
- format
The format of the output.
- One of the following values: json, jsonfm, none, php, phpfm, rawfm, xml, xmlfm
- Default: jsonfm
- maxlag
Maximum lag can be used when MediaWiki is installed on a database replicated cluster. To save actions causing any more site replication lag, this parameter can make the client wait until the replication lag is less than the specified value. In case of excessive lag, error code maxlag is returned with a message like Waiting for $host: $lag seconds lagged.
See Manual: Maxlag parameter for more information.- Type: integer
- smaxage
Set the
s-maxage
HTTP cache control header to this many seconds. Errors are never cached.- Type: integer
- Default: 0
- maxage
Set the
max-age
HTTP cache control header to this many seconds. Errors are never cached.- Type: integer
- Default: 0
- assert
Verify the user is logged in if set to user, or has the bot user right if bot.
- One of the following values: user, bot
- assertuser
Verify the current user is the named user.
- Type: user name
- requestid
Any value given here will be included in the response. May be used to distinguish requests.
- servedby
Include the hostname that served the request in the results.
- Type: boolean (details)
- curtimestamp
Include the current timestamp in the result.
- Type: boolean (details)
- responselanginfo
Include the languages used for uselang and errorlang in the result.
- Type: boolean (details)
- origin
When accessing the API using a cross-domain AJAX request (CORS), set this to the originating domain. This must be included in any pre-flight request, and therefore must be part of the request URI (not the POST body).
For authenticated requests, this must match one of the origins in the
Origin
header exactly, so it has to be set to something like https://en.wikipedia.org or https://meta.wikimedia.org. If this parameter does not match theOrigin
header, a 403 response will be returned. If this parameter matches theOrigin
header and the origin is whitelisted, theAccess-Control-Allow-Origin
andAccess-Control-Allow-Credentials
headers will be set.For non-authenticated requests, specify the value *. This will cause the
Access-Control-Allow-Origin
header to be set, butAccess-Control-Allow-Credentials
will befalse
and all user-specific data will be restricted.- uselang
Language to use for message translations. action=query&meta=siteinfo with siprop=languages returns a list of language codes, or specify user to use the current user's language preference, or specify content to use this wiki's content language.
- Default: user
- errorformat
Format to use for warning and error text output.
- plaintext
- Wikitext with HTML tags removed and entities replaced.
- wikitext
- Unparsed wikitext.
- html
- HTML.
- raw
- Message key and parameters.
- none
- No text output, only the error codes.
- bc
- Format used prior to MediaWiki 1.29. errorlang and errorsuselocal are ignored.
- One of the following values: plaintext, wikitext, html, raw, none, bc
- Default: bc
- errorlang
Language to use for warnings and errors. action=query&meta=siteinfo with siprop=languages returns a list of language codes, or specify content to use this wiki's content language, or specify uselang to use the same value as the uselang parameter.
- Default: uselang
- errorsuselocal
If given, error texts will use locally-customized messages from the MediaWiki namespace.
- Type: boolean (details)
- Help for the main module.
- api.php?action=help [open in sandbox]
- All help in one page.
- api.php?action=help&recursivesubmodules=1 [open in sandbox]
Data types
Input to MediaWiki should be NFC-normalized UTF-8. MediaWiki may attempt to convert other input, but this may cause some operations (such as edits with MD5 checks) to fail.
Some parameter types in API requests need further explanation:
- boolean
- Boolean parameters work like HTML checkboxes: if the parameter is specified, regardless of value, it is considered true. For a false value, omit the parameter entirely.
- timestamp
- Timestamps may be specified in several formats. ISO 8601 date and time is recommended. All times are in UTC, any included timezone is ignored.
- ISO 8601 date and time, 2001-01-15T14:56:00Z (punctuation and Z are optional)
- ISO 8601 date and time with (ignored) fractional seconds, 2001-01-15T14:56:00.00001Z (dashes, colons, and Z are optional)
- MediaWiki format, 20010115145600
- Generic numeric format, 2001-01-15 14:56:00 (optional timezone of GMT, +##, or -## is ignored)
- EXIF format, 2001:01:15 14:56:00
- RFC 2822 format (timezone may be omitted), Mon, 15 Jan 2001 14:56:00
- RFC 850 format (timezone may be omitted), Monday, 15-Jan-2001 14:56:00
- C ctime format, Mon Jan 15 14:56:00 2001
- Seconds since 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z as a 1 to 13 digit integer (excluding 0)
- The string now
- alternative multiple-value separator
- Parameters that take multiple values are normally submitted with the values separated using the pipe character, e.g. param=value1|value2 or param=value1%7Cvalue2. If a value must contain the pipe character, use U+001F (Unit Separator) as the separator and prefix the value with U+001F, e.g. param=%1Fvalue1%1Fvalue2.
Credits
API developers:
- Yuri Astrakhan (creator, lead developer Sep 2006–Sep 2007)
- Roan Kattouw (lead developer Sep 2007–2009)
- Victor Vasiliev
- Bryan Tong Minh
- Sam Reed
- Brad Jorsch (lead developer 2013–present)
Please send your comments, suggestions and questions to mediawiki-api@lists.wikimedia.org or file a bug report at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/.