We are releasing Infoboxer version 0.2 today – which is still young but already highly useful MediaWiki (including Wikipedia) hi-level data client.

Please look at Infoboxer’s showcase to have a feeling of what it can do for you.

Since first announce in Aug 2015, Infoboxer already made a huge advance in stability and usability.

In new release:

new backend library, allowing to receive various lists of pages ;

; new shiny infoboxer interactive console for experiments;

for experiments; various cleanups and fixes.

Lists of pages

Previously, Infoboxer allowed you only to fetch one or several pages from MediaWiki by their titles:

Infoboxer . wikipedia . get ( 'Argentina' ) # => #<Page(title: "Argentina")> # or Infoboxer . wikipedia . get ( 'Argentina' , 'Bolivia' , 'Chile' ) # => [#<Page(title: "Argentina")>, #<Page(title: "Bolivia")>, #<Page(title: "Chile")>]

Number of pages you could fetch this way was limited to 50 (MediaWiki API limitation) in version 0.1.

Currently, with version 0.2 and new backend library, you can fetch as many pages as you like in one #get call. Internally, it will be translated in several API requests. Overall process can take some time, but eventually you’ll have them :)

Moreover, new version introduces #category , #search and #prefixsearch methods for receiving whole lists of pages:

# Category # -------- cars = Infoboxer . wikipedia . category ( 'Cars introduced in 2015' ) cars . count # => 31 cars . map ( & :title ) # => ["Alfa Romeo Giulia (952)", "BMW 7 Series (G11)", "Borgward BX7", "BYD Tang", "Cadillac CT6", "Chevrolet Camaro (sixth generation)", "Chevrolet Volt (second generation)", "Ferrari 488", "Ferrari FXX-K", "Fiat 124 Spider (2016)", "Fiat Aegea", "Honda S660", "Hyundai Creta", "Jaguar F-Pace", "Koenigsegg Regera", "Maserati Levante", "Mazda CX-3", "McLaren 570S", "Mercedes-Benz GLC-Class", "MG GS", "Tesla Model X", "Opel Karl", "Renault Kadjar", "Renault Kwid", "Renault Talisman", "Rolls-Royce Dawn (2015)", "SsangYong Tivoli", "Tata Zica", "Ferrari F12berlinetta", "McLaren 650S", "Mercedes-Benz M-Class"] cars . infoboxes . fetch ( 'body_style' ). map ( & :to_s ). uniq # => ["4-door saloon", "Sport utility vehicle (SUV)", "4-door Sedan", "", "5-door hatchback", "2-seat berlinetta

2-seat convertible", "2-seat berlinetta", "2-door roadster", "4-door sedan

5-door hatchback

5-door station wagon", "5-door SUV", "2-door Targa top", "2-door coupé", "2-door SUV", "4-door saloon

5-door estate", "3-door 2+2 coupé", "2-door convertible", "2-door berlinetta", "2-door coupé

2-door roadster", "5-door crossover/sport utility vehicle"] # Search # ------ Infoboxer . wikipedia . search ( '"I am Groot"' ). map ( & :title ) # => ["Griffon Ramsey", "Groot", "Guardians of the Galaxy (film)"] # Prefix search (titles starting with) # ------------- Infoboxer . wikipedia . prefixsearch ( 'List of town tramway systems in' ). map ( & :title ) # => ["List of town tramway systems in Africa", "List of town tramway systems in Argentina", "List of town tramway systems in Asia", "List of town tramway systems in Austria", "List of town tramway systems in Belarus", "List of town tramway systems in Belgium", "List of town tramway systems in Brazil", "List of town tramway systems in Central America", "List of town tramway systems in Chile", "List of town tramway systems in Croatia", "List of town tramway systems in Denmark", "List of town tramway systems in Europe", "List of town tramway systems in Finland", "List of town tramway systems in France", "List of town tramway systems in Greece", "List of town tramway systems in Hungary", "List of town tramway systems in Italy", "List of town tramway systems in Japan", "List of town tramway systems in North America", "List of town tramway systems in Norway", "List of town tramway systems in Oceania", "List of town tramway systems in Poland", "List of town tramway systems in Portugal", "List of town tramway systems in Romania", "List of town tramway systems in Russia", "List of town tramway systems in Scotland", "List of town tramway systems in Serbia", "List of town tramway systems in South America", "List of town tramway systems in Spain", "List of town tramway systems in Sweden", "List of town tramway systems in Switzerland", "List of town tramway systems in Ukraine", "List of town tramway systems in the Czech Republic", "List of town tramway systems in the Netherlands", "List of town tramway systems in the Republic of Ireland", "List of town tramway systems in the United Kingdom", "List of modern tramway & light rail systems in England", "List of street railways in Canada", "List of streetcar systems in the United States", "List of urban tram networks in Germany"]

Warning: currently, there’s no way to limit number of pages fetches. So, saying something like Infoboxer.wikipedia.search('ruby') may require you to wait… a lot of time. Better lists fetching granularity is on the way!

New backend

For Infoboxer’s needs, we started to develop new generic low-level MediaWiki client library, called mediawiktory.

It is still really young, yet, unlike all the rivals, it targets all MediaWiki API, which is pretty hard yet useful. It tries to provide structure, chanable, Arel/Sequel-alike query interface for perfoming any task MediaWiki allows. A first glance to MediaWiktory functionality:

client = MediaWiktory :: Client . new ( 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php' ) response = client . query . generator ( categorymembers: { title: 'Category:Countries_in_South_America' , limit: 30 }). prop ( revisions: { prop: :content }). perform # MediaWiktory handles "next page fetching" for you, if you want response . continue! while response . continue? # MediaWiktory parses response and provides smart shortcuts p response . pages . map ( & :title )

Interactive infoboxer console

Installs as a binary alongside infoboxer gem.

Generic usage with access to any wiki:

> infoboxer $ wiki('http//mywiki.com/w/api.php').get(....) $ wikipedia.category(....)

With predefined wiki:

> infoboxer -wikipedia Default Wiki selected: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php. Now you can use `get('Pagename')`, `category('Categoryname')` and so on. $ get('Argentina')

With any wiki:

> infoboxer -w http://mywiki/w/api.php Default Wiki selected: http://mywiki/w/api.php Now you can use `get('Pagename')`, `category('Categoryname')` and so on. $ get('MyProduct') # you can still use any other wiki: $ wikipedia.get('Argentina')

Cleanups, fixes, shortcuts and so on

Internally, there were a lot of work done for cleanup of code, providing and documenting new smart features, like Template#to_h allowing to convert entire large infoboxes into hashes in a blink.

But, there’s a long way ahead of us! You can contribute to infoboxer development by describing (or fixing!) issues or just by giving it a try and provide us with your precious feedback.

Thanks.