MediaWiki API help

This is an auto-generated MediaWiki API documentation page.

Documentation and examples: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API

Main module

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.

Parameters:
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, stashedit, tag, tokens, unblock, undelete, unlinkaccount, upload, userrights, 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)
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 the Origin header, a 403 response will be returned. If this parameter matches the Origin header and the origin is whitelisted, the Access-Control-Allow-Origin and Access-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, but Access-Control-Allow-Credentials will be false 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
Examples:
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]
Permissions:
writeapi
Use of the write API
Granted to: all, user, bot
apihighlimits
Use higher limits in API queries (slow queries: 500; fast queries: 5000). The limits for slow queries also apply to multivalue parameters.
Granted to: bot, sysop

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/.

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