API sandbox

Use this page to experiment with the MediaWiki web service API. Refer to the API documentation for further details of API usage. Example: get the content of a Main Page. Select an action to see more examples. Note that, although this is a sandbox, actions you carry out on this page may modify the wiki.

main

Status: The MediaWiki API is a mature and stable interface that is actively supported and improved. While we try to avoid it, we may occasionally need to make breaking changes; 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.

Examples

Which action to perform. Expand

block: Block a user.
changeauthenticationdata: Change authentication data for the current user.
checktoken: Check the validity of a token from action=query&meta=tokens.
clearhasmsg: Clears the hasmsg flag for the current user.
clientlogin: Log in to the wiki using the interactive flow.
compare: Get the difference between two pages.
createaccount: Create a new user account.
cspreport: Used by browsers to report violations of the Content Security Policy. This module should never be used, except when used automatically by a CSP compliant web browser.
delete: Delete a page.
edit: Create and edit pages.
emailuser: Email a user.
expandtemplates: Expands all templates within wikitext.
feedcontributions: Returns a user contributions feed.
feedrecentchanges: Returns a recent changes feed.
feedwatchlist: Returns a watchlist feed.
filerevert: Revert a file to an old version.
help: Display help for the specified modules.
imagerotate: Rotate one or more images.
import: Import a page from another wiki, or from an XML file.
linkaccount: Link an account from a third-party provider to the current user.
login: Log in and get authentication cookies.
logout: Log out and clear session data.
managetags: Perform management tasks relating to change tags.
mergehistory: Merge page histories.
move: Move a page.
opensearch: Search the wiki using the OpenSearch protocol.
options: Change preferences of the current user.
paraminfo: Obtain information about API modules.
parse: Parses content and returns parser output.
patrol: Patrol a page or revision.
protect: Change the protection level of a page.
purge: Purge the cache for the given titles.
query: Fetch data from and about MediaWiki.
removeauthenticationdata: Remove authentication data for the current user.
resetpassword: Send a password reset email to a user.
revisiondelete: Delete and undelete revisions.
rollback: Undo the last edit to the page.
rsd: Export an RSD (Really Simple Discovery) schema.
setnotificationtimestamp: Update the notification timestamp for watched pages.
setpagelanguage: Change the language of a page.
stashedit: Prepare an edit in shared cache.
tag: Add or remove change tags from individual revisions or log entries.
unblock: Unblock a user.
undelete: Restore revisions of a deleted page.
unlinkaccount: Remove a linked third-party account from the current user.
upload: Upload a file, or get the status of pending uploads.
userrights: Change a user's group membership.
validatepassword: Validate a password against the wiki's password policies.
watch: Add or remove pages from the current user's watchlist.
tokens: Deprecated. Get tokens for data-modifying actions.

The format of the output. Expand

json: Output data in JSON format.
jsonfm: Output data in JSON format (pretty-print in HTML).
none: Output nothing.
php: Output data in serialized PHP format.
phpfm: Output data in serialized PHP format (pretty-print in HTML).
rawfm: Output data, including debugging elements, in JSON format (pretty-print in HTML).
xml: Output data in XML format.
xmlfm: Output data in XML format (pretty-print in HTML).

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.

Set the s-maxage HTTP cache control header to this many seconds. Errors are never cached.

Set the max-age HTTP cache control header to this many seconds. Errors are never cached.

Verify the user is logged in if set to user, or has the bot user right if bot.

Verify the current user is the named user.

Any value given here will be included in the response. May be used to distinguish requests.

Include the hostname that served the request in the results.

Include the current timestamp in the result.

Include the languages used for uselang and errorlang in the result.

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.

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.

Format to use for warning and error text output. Expand

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.

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.

If given, error texts will use locally-customized messages from the MediaWiki namespace.

format=json

Output data in JSON format.

Help linksExamples

If specified, wraps the output into a given function call. For safety, all user-specific data will be restricted.

If specified, encodes most (but not all) non-ASCII characters as UTF-8 instead of replacing them with hexadecimal escape sequences. Default when formatversion is not 1.

If specified, encodes all non-ASCII using hexadecimal escape sequences. Default when formatversion is 1.

Output formatting: Expand

1: Backwards-compatible format (XML-style booleans, * keys for content nodes, etc.).
2: Modern format.
latest: Use the latest format (currently 2), may change without warning.

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