Talk:WikiApiary: Difference between revisions

"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? [[User:Leucosticte|Leucosticte]] ([[User talk:Leucosticte|talk]]) 12:33, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

:Push: bots? Pull: [[mw:Extension:Scribunto]]? Or [[Special:Gadgets]]? --[[YiFei]] | <small>[[User talk:Zhuyifei1999|talk]]</small> 14:02, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

:::Bots: as 'text' on WikiIndex directly; [[mw:Extension:Scribunto|Scribunto]]: page cache on WikiIndex; Gadgets: Client cache (the viewers ourselves get the data; probably not a good idea). --[[YiFei]] | <small>[[User talk:Zhuyifei1999|talk]]</small> 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., [https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59665 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 [[mw:Manual:Page_props table|page props table]]. [[User:Leucosticte|Leucosticte]] ([[User talk: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.

:<s>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 <s>Scribunto cannot access external sources<!-- </s> --> (needs either luacurl or luasocket installed). --[[YiFei]] | <small>[[User talk:Zhuyifei1999|talk]]</small> 09:19, 7 January 2014 (UTC)</s> Wait --[[YiFei]] | <small>[[User talk:Zhuyifei1999|talk]]</small> 10:40, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

::I think it would be best to post these requests to [http://lists.thingelstad.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wikiapiary-l wikiapiary-l]; the more people we make aware, the higher the odds that we'll get the best result in the end (assuming we don't run into [[wikipedia:The Mythical Man-Month|triple-M]] problems). [[User:Leucosticte|Leucosticte]] ([[User talk:Leucosticte|talk]]) 17:17, 7 January 2014 (UTC)