MediaWiki has several application programming interfaces (APIs).

The three most important APIs of MediaWiki are:

Note that the MediaWiki Action API and the MediaWiki JavaScript API are both modular: both can be extended by extensions, so the available API modules can differ from wiki to wiki.[1] While the API modules built into MediaWiki Core are available in most MediaWiki wikis, built-in Action API modules can also be disabled .

Within the context of the MediaWiki website the Action API can be accessed from JavaScript via the mw.Api JavaScript API. (mw.ForeignApi for allowed cross-site requests, e.g. between WMF wikis.) For libraries to access the MediaWiki Action API from your favorite programming language, see API:Client code .

Other web APIs

This table: view · talk · edit
API Availability URL base Example
  MediaWiki Action API Included with MediaWiki

Enabled on Wikimedia projects

/api.php https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=info&titles=Earth
  MediaWiki REST API Included with MediaWiki 1.35+

Enabled on Wikimedia projects

/rest.php https://en.wikipedia.org/w/rest.php/v1/page/Earth
  Wikimedia REST API Not included with MediaWiki

Available for Wikimedia projects only

/api/rest https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/title/Earth
  For commercial-scale APIs for Wikimedia projects, see Wikimedia Enterprise

See also

Suggestions and ideas for the MediaWiki APIs are tracked on Phabricator :

Footnotes

  1. For extending the Action API, see API:Extensions . For information about JavaScript modules, see ResourceLoader .