On 6/8/15, S Page <sp...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > On Mon, Jun 8, 2015 at 4:16 PM, Brian Wolff <bawo...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> The search api (by which I mean query=search in api.php) is somewhat >> poorly documented. You have to dig to find >> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:CirrusSearch . > > > I recently added https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Search_and_discovery > which clarifies the connection with Help:CirrusSearch, and mentions other > kinds of searching like geosearch. >
Last I looked at the docs was about 6 months ago. Glad to hear they're improving. >> >> I would much prefer >> that the relavent documentation was including in the normal api.php >> auto-generated help. > > > https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/216899 changes the > 'apihelp-query+search-param-search message' in > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:ApiHelp/query+search to > *srsearch* > > Search for page titles and page content that match this value. You can use > the search string to invoke special wiki search features, depending on what > its search backend implements. > But API query search can only use CirrusSearch features if it's installed. > I think Extension:CirrusSearch could handle the 'APIGetAllowedParams' hook > to modified this help text. If I understand correctly, it might be easier > to interpose WMF-specific help text that links to mw:Help:CirrusSearch in a > 'wikimedia-apihelp-query+search-param-search' key in > extensions/WikimediaMessages/i18n/wikimediaoverrides/en.json ; I tried it > locally and it didn't work. It shouldn't be WMF specific (since its not WMF specific like TOS links), it should be specific to CirrusSearch. One possible implementation would be to do an override message (I would note, that the wikimediaoverride messages aren't direct overrides, they are replacement messages used by other code that does the overriding). In my original email I was thinking more from a user perspective of what I'd like to see, without thought to how it would be implemented. Without looking at the code, I would probably favour an extra hook just for the search module, instead of using the generic hook. > > >> Even better would be if that api allowed users to >> specify the options using normal url parameters, (as a separate >> options from using operators in the search string). Its also not >> entirely the most clear from the api that the search options differ >> depending on which extensions you have installed. >> > > What do you mean? Beyone special terms in srsearch I'm not aware of any > changes to query+search's sr parameters depending on extensions. > Yeah, that doesn't happen currently. I think it should be the case, it would mesh much better with the mediawiki api if instead of doing https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=search&srsearch=Black+incategory:Felis_silvestris_catus&srnamespace=6 you could do something like https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=search&srincategory=Felis_silvestris_catus&srsearch=Black&srnamespace=6 . Especially if all the parameters were documented in the normal api way, I think it would represent a big boon to discovering the hidden features of search. (I appreciate it might be a lot of work to express all the search options possible, but the original email sounded like it wanted a wishlist). -- bawolff _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
