DS4UX (Spring 2016)/Panama Papers

This page is a work in progress.

In this project, we will explore a few ways to gather data using two Wikipedia APIs: one provides data related to edits, and the other provides data related to pageviews. Once we've done that, we will extend this to code to create our own datasets of Wikipedia edits or other data that we might be able to use to ask and answer questions in the final session.

Panama Papers

Goals

• Get set up to build datasets with Wikipedia APIs
• Have fun collecting different types of data from Wikipedia
• Practice reading API documentation
• Pracice testing API queries in an API Sandbox
• Practice reading and extending other people's code

Datasources

Wikipedia Edit API

• the API sandbox - a tool for building queries

Wikipedia Page View API

• Use the experimental API
• This API is a little different because it uses relative paths instead of parameters.
• This API is case-sensitive.
• Request for Panama Papers: https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/metrics/pageviews/per-article/en.wikipedia/all-access/user/Panama_Papers/daily/20160401/20160420

Exercises

Building queries in the Wikipedia editing API Sandbox

When was the most recent edit to the Panama Papers article?

• View query in sandbox
• View result in browser

When was the article about the Panama Papers created?

• View query in sandbox
• View result in browser
• Follow up: How many edits has the creator of Panama Papers made to Wikipedia?

• View query in sandbox
• View result in browser

What was the text of the Panama Papers article 24 hours after it was created?

• View query in sandbox
• View result in browser
• revision on Wikipedia
• "diff" view of revision

Who has edited the Panama Papers article?

• View query in sandbox
• View result in browser

What categories is the Panama Papers article in?

• View query in sandbox
• View result in browser

What other articles does Panama Papers link to?

• View query in sandbox
• View result in browser

Building queries in the Wikipedia page view API Sandbox

1. How many views did Panama Papers have on the day it was created?
2. How many views did Panama Papers have yesterday?
3. How many people viewed Panama Papers using the Wikipedia mobile website on its first day?

Building queries with Python requests

1. How many views did Panama Papers have in the first week?
2. How many edits did Panama Papers get in the first 24 hours?

Resources

• API documentation for the query module
• API Sandbox
• Sample Wikipedia API queries
• The session lecture notes (in Markdown) and python sources.
• Sample Wikipedia API questions