WikiLink - The Mediawiki Interface

WikiLink is actually two separate things; firstly, a java class for interfacing with a mediawiki server, and secondly, a Mathematica package providing a wrapper around this. This page documents the Mathematica package, while the java class, and its addition functionality, will be documented elsewhere.

License

WikiLink.nb, WikiLink.m and wikilink.jar are copyright Scott Morrison, available under your choice of the MIT, Apache or GPL licenses. The other components are copyright by other parties, all available under the Apache license.

Download

Download WikiLink.zip (file description). Unzip this, probably in the same place you've unzipped the KnotTheory` package. This will create a subdirectory called WikiLink, containing (at least) these files:

Filename	Description
WikiLink.nb	The Mathematica notebook containing wrapper function definitions.
WikiLink.m	The Mathematica package automatically generated from WikiLink.nb.
wikilink.jar	The WikiLink java class and source code (MediawikiConnection.java).
jdom.jar commons-httpclient-3.0-rc2.jar commons-codec-1.3.jar commons-lang-2.1.jar commons-logging.jar	Libraries (all available under either GPL or the Apache license) required by wikilink.jar

Importing the package in Mathematica

First, you'll need to set some paths, so WikiLink` can find the java files it needs.

In[1]:=

KnotAtlasPath = "c:\\scott\\math.berkeley.edu\\Work\\Mathematica\\KnotAtlas\\";

In[2]:=

AppendTo[$Path, KnotAtlasPath];

In[3]:=

SetDirectory[KnotAtlasPath];

In[4]:=

<< "WikiLink\\WikiLink.m"

In[5]:=

SetJarPath[KnotAtlasPath <> "WikiLink\\"];

We then try to connect to the wiki. Executing this line will prompt you for a username and password.

In[6]:=

CreateWikiConnection[ "http://katlas.math.toronto.edu/w/index.php", InputString["Enter Your Username:"], InputString["Enter Your Password"] ]

The function WikiUserName[] checks that we're logged in

In[6]:= ?WikiUserName WikiUserName[] returns either the name of the user you are logged in as, your IP address if you're not logged in, or $Failed if something more complicated has happened!

In[7]:=	WikiUserName[]
Out[7]=	ScottManualRobot

Usage

WikiLink` provides functions for checking your login status, getting and setting pages, as well as transparently extending some of Mathematica's string manipulation functions to wiki pages.

In[8]:= ?WikiGetPageText WikiGetPageText[pagename] returns the raw text of the specified page.

In[9]:= ?WikiSetPageText WikiSetPageText[pagename, text] overwrites the contents of the specificied page with the given text. WikiSetPageText[pagename, text, summary] overwrites the contents of the specificied page with the given text and notes summary in the change log.

In[10]:= ?WikiSetPageTexts WikiSetPageText[{{pagename1, text1},{pagename2,text2},...}] efficiently sets multiple pages, by first checking which texts are already up to date.

In[11]:= ?WikiUploadFile WikiUploadFile[name, description] uploads the specified file to the wiki.

Thus for example after

In[12]:=	WikiSetPageText["Sandbox", "A robotic edit, at 19:39, 31-August-2005."]
Out[12]=	True

we get

In[13]:=	WikiGetPageText["Sandbox"]
Out[13]=	A robotic edit, at 19:39, 31-August-2005.

The function WikiSetPageTexts is most useful for batch uploads, as it does considerably more error checking, and filters out edits which won't change the page text. It takes as argument a list of {"title", "text"} pairs, and returns a list of those pairs which failed.

In[14]:=	WikiSetPageTexts[{{"Sandbox", "A robotic edit, by --~~"<>"~~"}, {"Sandbox2", "The determinant of the knot [[3_1]] is 3."}}]
Out[14]=	{}

In[15]:=	WikiGetPageText["Sandbox2"]
Out[15]=	The determinant of the knot [[3_1]] is 3.

String manipulation functions

WikiLink` provides functions WikiPageMatchQ, WikiPageFreeQ, WikiStringReplace and WikiStringCases. Each function works likes its usual Mathematica partner, StringMatchQ, StringFreeQ, StringReplace or StringCases. Instead of providing a string, or list of strings, as the first argument, you should give the name of a page, or a list of names.

You can use these to perform all sorts of editing tricks.

Troubleshooting

The instruction ShowJavaConsole[] will bring up a window in which some debugging information is displayed.

Compatibility

WikiLink has been tested against mediawiki 1.4.5beta3 and 1.4.7.

I expect WikiGetPage text to continue working in mediawiki 1.5 and beyond, because it uses the stable interface Special:Export. Logging in and setting pages will quite likely break in the next version. If you've tried this, please let me know about your experiences. I'm hoping that soon (1.5?) Special:Import will become available, and I can switch to using this. --Scott 15:57, 31 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Todo

I'd love to create an Ant task which allows uploading a file to a wiki. We could then use this in build scripts for KnotTheory, etc. --Scott 04:07, 17 Sep 2005 (EDT)

See Also

All of the Mathematica notebooks in Category:Knot Atlas Maintenance Software rely on WikiLink, and so are good examples of how to use it.

You may also be interested in the Wikipedia page on mediawiki bots, and in particular the Python Wikipedia Robot Framework.