On 17.11.2010, 16:39 Raymond wrote: > Hi everyone,
> I plan to be making a fair number of read access calls to the Wikipedia > API over the next several months and would like to know what the best > practices for efficient, fast access that doesn't hog resources. I've > found that having a single thread that makes a call and waits for a > response before making the next call has been extremely reliable (much > more so > than basically any other web API I've used before). What I'd like to > do make my application multithreaded for reading from the Wikipedia and > make simultaneous calls to the Wikipedia (since the speed of my > application is limited by the rate at which I can read from the Wikipedia.) > I have the following questions: > 1) What limits should I observe in terms of number of calls I make per > second Per Domas, fewer requests with larger limits is better. > and how many calls I should have going simultaneously? One. > 2) How would I know when I'm accessing the API too quickly or too > often? I read at > http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Errors_and_warnings > that there is ratelimited error message, but so far, I've not seen that > error myself. If I don't get a ratelimited error, does that mean I'm > doing ok with respect to being a good API citizen. Rate limits are for editing and logging in only. > 3) Even if I am requiring read access, should I identify myself > explicitly to the API by logging in for the read access -- so that I can > be contacted should there be a problem? Logging in can help you to get a higher limit if you're a sysop or bot. However, identifying you with user-agent header is much more important. > 4) Does it make sense to try to obtain bot privileges (even for read > only access)? My understanding is that bots get access to larger > payload in some API calls. See above. If your bot will generate a significant load, it's always better to consult the sysadmins and the bot approvals group (for English Wikipedia). The more details you provide, the more precise will be the answer. -- Best regards, Max Semenik ([[User:MaxSem]]) _______________________________________________ Mediawiki-api mailing list Mediawiki-api@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-api
