Talk:WikiApiary

"For MediaWiki sites on WikiIndex it would be really cool to be able to feed a live infobox from WikiApiary with data on usage. Some sort of Widget or something." So, should WikiApiary push the data to WikiIndex, or should WikiIndex pull the data from WikiApiary? Leucosticte (talk) 12:33, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Push: bots? Pull: mw:Extension:Scribunto? Or Special:Gadgets? --YiFei | talk 14:02, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't know how you would implement it using either of those. The backend would need to be figured out too; what database table would this data be stored in? Leucosticte (talk) 14:03, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Bots: as 'text' on WikiIndex directly; Scribunto: page cache on WikiIndex; Gadgets: Client cache (the viewers ourselves get the data; probably not a good idea). --YiFei | talk 14:11, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Bots could also push to a different API module that allows access to a database table(s) just for this data. Pushing to wikitext could be kinda brittle theoretically, although I think in practice the pages are standardized enough that it might work. Another advantage of using a separate table is that it could make data retrieval by API easier and less brittle too.

A disadvantage is that it could get pretty complex if we want to save a history of all the changes made to that data. We already have a system in place that saves old revisions of pages. This is pretty much the conondrum any time it's proposed to store more data in a wiki (see, e.g., bug 59665). Sometimes you can do a mix of both; e.g. mw:Extension:BedellPenDragon enables the saving of a new revision to change data in the page props table. Leucosticte (talk) 11:09, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Before going down the Scribunto route, you guys need to get User:DennouNeko to weigh in on this conversation (for his Lua experience). And I would specifically ask what implications this would have on server loading. Don't forget that WikiIndex is basically personally funded by RayKing – whereas many of the MediaWiki extensions are designed for mega-bucks server infrastructure of Wikimedia Foundation and/or Wikia.

Also, are either of you proficient with graphics? Sean, aka Hoof Hearted • _{Admin / 'Crat} • talk2HH 22:26, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

No, I'm more of a backend person. Leucosticte (talk) 00:34, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Graphics can be generated by svg. And I can make a script do that with the help of mw:Extension:Scribunto/Lua reference manual (why do we have to ping others?). But the only thing I'm worried about is the server load (I've seen WikiIndex down twice recently) & probably Scribunto cannot access external sources (needs either luacurl or luasocket installed). --YiFei | talk 09:19, 7 January 2014 (UTC) Wait --YiFei | talk 10:40, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

First, what graphs do we need? Pages, edits? --YiFei | talk 10:49, 7 January 2014 (UTC)