Update Aug 08, 2011: Some changes made thanks to updates in the new feature/tests-framework branch.

So I’ve been spending the past week and a half working on EarwigBot’s new wikitools framework thing (to avoid confusion with Mr.Z-man’s python-wikitools package, I’m referring to it as “EarwigBot’s Wiki Toolset” in the docs, even though it’s just wiki internally). Basically, it’s the interface between EarwigBot and the MediaWiki API.

As Josh put it, this is “the thing that actually makes it work”.

So, now you can do this (from within Python’s interpreter, a wiki bot task, or an IRC command):

>>> import wiki
>>> site = wiki.get_site()
>>> print site.name()
enwiki
>>> print site.project()
wikipedia
>>> print site.lang()
en
>>> print site.domain()
en.wikipedia.org

Our config.json file stores site information, along with our chosen “default site”. Pretty neat, huh? “But what can it actually do?” I hear you ask? Well, for example, we can get information about users:

>>> user = site.get_user("The Earwig")
>>> print user.editcount()
11079
>>> print user.groups()
[u'*', u'user', u'autoconfirmed', u'abusefilter', u'sysop']
>>> reg = user.registration()
>>> import time
>>> print time.strftime("%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S", reg)
Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:51:34

and pages as well, with intelligent namespace logic:

>>> page = site.get_page("Wikipedia:Articles for creation")
>>> print page.url()
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation
>>> print page.creator()
Uncle G
>>> print page.namespace()
4
>>> print site.namespace_id_to_name(4)
Wikipedia
>>> print site.namespace_id_to_name(4, all=True)
[u'Wikipedia', u'Project', u'WP']
>>> print page.is_talkpage()
False

>>> talkpage = page.toggle_talk()
>>> print talkpage.title()
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation
>>> print talkpage.is_talkpage()
True

and with support for redirect following:

>>> page = site.get_page("Main page")
>>> print page.is_redirect()
True
>>> print page.get()
#REDIRECT [[Main Page]]
[[Category:Protected redirects]]
[[Category:Main Page| ]]
>>> print page.get_redirect_target()
Main Page

>>> page = site.get_page("Main page", follow_redirects=True)
>>> print page.is_redirect()
False  # would only be True if "Main page" is a double redirect
>>> print page.get()
<!--        BANNER ACROSS TOP OF PAGE        -->
{| id="mp-topbanner" style="width:100%; background:#f9f9f9; margin:1.2em 0 6px 0; border:1px solid #ddd;"
| style="width:61%; color:#000;" |
...

Of course, a Wiki Toolset would be nothing without login! Our username and password are stored (encrypted with Blowfish) in the bot’s config.json file, and we login automatically whenever we create a new Site object – unless we’re already logged in, of course, and we know that based on whether we have valid login cookies.

>>> user = site.get_user()  # gets the logged-in user
>>> print user.name()
EarwigBot

Cookies are stored in a special .cookies file in the project root (with no access given to other users, of course). We support both per-project login and CentralAuth, meaning I can do…

>>> es = wiki.get_site("eswiki")
>>> print es.get_user().name()
EarwigBot

without making additional logins. One thing I strove for when designing the toolset was as minimal API usage as possible – we accept gzipped data, we don’t make API queries unless they’re actually requested, and we combine queries whenever possible. Of course, I’m probably doing it all wrong, but it seems to be working so far.

So… yeah. Carry on then!

—earwig