Wikidata API

Introduction

Wikidata, a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, serves as a centralized database for structured data that powers Wikipedia and its sister projects.

Wikidata is a free and open knowledge base that can be read and edited by both humans and machines.

Wikidata acts as central storage for the structured data of its Wikimedia sister projects including Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary, Wikisource, and others.

WikiData's powerful Application Programming Interface (API), grants developers the ability to programmatically access, query, and contribute to the vast wealth of knowledge stored within WikiData.

Getting Started

To use WikiData API, first, you need to set up your authentication.

Once you have obtained your API credentials, you're ready to start making requests to the WikiData API by following the OpenAPI Swagger documentation of Wikibase.

Depending on your programming environment, you may need to install additional libraries or packages to facilitate HTTP requests. Consult the documentation for your chosen programming language or framework for specific instructions on how to install and use it.

An example set up & implementation in Python

Rate Limiting and Quotas

Some actions of the API can be rate limited.

Normally if your account has the noratelimit right (e.g. Is in the Bot or Admin group)

More information about API rate limits

Error Handling

The Wikibase REST API throws informative error messages. For details visit here.

API users who have set the bot flag and receive a 403 (rest-write-denied) error likely lack the bot user right.

Advanced Topics

Some advanced topics found:

• Revision History
• Edit Summaries
• Data import & Data export
• Caching
• Geospatial Data Support (with GeoSPARQL Queries)
• Language-Based Queries

Sources:

Tutorials:

• How to use Wikidata API using Python requests module.
• Defining things using "The awesome Wikidata API"
• https://agg-shashank.medium.com/an-introduction-to-using-wikidata-apis-a678ee6d2968
• https://www.markhneedham.com/blog/2020/01/29/newbie-guide-querying-wikidata/
• https://www.jcchouinard.com/wikidata-api-python/
• https://www.jcchouinard.com/wikipedia-api/

Documentations:

• https://doc.wikimedia.org/Wikibase/master/php/repo_rest-api_README.html
• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page

Example projects:

General:

• Wikidata Query Service

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• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:REST_API#How_to_use_the_API
• https://doc.wikimedia.org/Wikibase/master/js/rest-api/
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Data_access
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Tools/For_programmers
• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Pywikibot
• https://agg-shashank.medium.com/an-introduction-to-using-wikidata-apis-a678ee6d2968
• https://www.jcchouinard.com/wikidata-api-python/
• https://doc.wikimedia.org/Wikibase/master/js/rest-api/#/
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Data_access
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31266398/getting-readable-results-from-wikidata
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:REST_API
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:REST_API/Authentication
• https://github.com/topics/wikidata-api (we can select some of the project topics)
• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikidata_Toolkit
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Stable_Interface_Policy
• https://swagger.io/specification/#versions
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:REST_API/Comparison
• https://github.com/connorshea/wikidatum
• https://github.com/internetarchive/wikibase-patcher
• https://pypi.org/project/wikibase-rest-api-client/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAPI_Specification
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REST
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAPI_Specification