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.
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
Download and test the Wikipedia API project
- Right click the following file, click "Save Target as..." or "Save link as...", and save it to your Desktop directory:
https://jtmorgan.net/ds4ux/week6/panama-papers.zip
- Find
panama-papers.zipon your Desktop and double-click on it to "unzip" it. That will create a folder calledpanama-paperscontaining several files. - In PowerShell or Terminal, navigate to the
panama-papersdirectory and type:
Example topics we might cover in the session
Main Wikipedia API
- explain MediaWiki, exists on other wikis
- navigate to api page and show the documentation, point out examples
- introduce the API sandbox as a tool for building queries
- looking at the images within a page http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&titles=Seattle&prop=images&imlimit=20&format=jsonfm
- change the city with a custom URL
- edit count http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=users&ususers=Benjamin_Mako_Hill%7CJtmorgan%7CSj%7CKoavf&usprop=editcount&format=jsonfm
- get the content of the main page http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?format=json&action=query&titles=Main%20Page&prop=revisions&rvprop=content
Page View API
- Use the experimental API
- Explain that this API is a little different because it uses relative paths instead of parameters.
- Also note that 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
Questions to answer
Warm up questions:
- When was the article about the Panama Papers created?
- When was the most recent edit to the Panama Papers article?
- Think of one or two articles that interest you. Which ones were created first?
- Which have been edited most recently?
How many views did Panama_Papers have…
- the day it was created?
- the first week?
- How does this compare to the articles that interest you?
How many edits did it get in…
- the first 24 hours?
- the first week?
- How many edits did the articles that interest you get?
More difficult questions:
- Who made the total most edits to the article?
- What’s the number of edits per day in the first two weeks of the article?
- What’s the peak number of edits per hour of the article? When did it occur?
- Who were the top editors during that hour?
- What day did it have the most views, and how many views did it have?
- How many views did it have per day?
- How many views did it have per day on German Wikipedia?
- Who’s the person named in the Panama papers with the most views to their Wikipedia page?
