Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:05:08 UTC
When looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&meta=siteinfo&siprop It returns: You are looking at the HTML representation of the XML format. HTML is good for debugging, but probably is not suitable for your application. See complete documentation, or API help for more information. <?xml version="1.0"?> <api /> This is not valid xml. What it should return is: (as when you look at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&meta=siteinfo&sipro) You are looking at the HTML representation of the XML format. HTML is good for debugging, but probably is not suitable for your application. See complete documentation, or API help for more information. <?xml version="1.0"?> <api> <query> <general mainpage="Main Page" base="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page" sitename="Wikipedia" generator="MediaWiki 1.16alpha-wmf" phpversion="5.2.4-2ubuntu5.7wm1" phpsapi="apache2handler" dbtype="mysql" dbversion="5.1.43-wm3193-log" rev="59858" case="first-letter" rights="Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported" lang="en" fallback8bitEncoding="windows-1252" writeapi="" timezone="UTC" timeoffset="0" articlepath="/wiki/$1" scriptpath="/w" script="/w/index.php" variantarticlepath="" server="http://en.wikipedia.org" wikiid="enwiki" /> </query> </api> There is a related thread at WP:VPT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vpt#API_version)
On second thought, it really should return an error message as http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&meta=siteinfo&sifilteriw does so it should return something like: <?xml version="1.0"?> <api> <error code="siunknown_siprop" info="Unrecognized value for parameter (siprop(: " xml:space="preserve"> </api> It should return some kind of error message, not a borked api message as it currently does.
It seems the same error afflicts http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&meta
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&metadvc also gives bad return... Tmrw I'll open a small series of bugs after I check all the api modules.
Do you really mean version 1.3?
I thought I hit unspecified...oops.
I've looked at http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/includes/api/ApiQuerySiteinfo.php and the problem is that it assumes there are parameters. What it should say is something like this public function execute() { $params = $this->extractRequestParams(); if(empty($params)) ApiBase :: dieDebug( __METHOD__, "No prop specified..." ); else { $done = array(); foreach ( $params['prop'] as $p ) { .... It could give better error handling, but it would suffice for now... It's probably best to add something into extractRequestParams() to make it return an error code when no params are given, rather than go through and add if(empty($params)) to all of the api php scripts...
If you don't specify something to return, it should not be unexpected that nothing it result. The response is valid XML anyway: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fw%2Fapi.php%3Faction%3Dquery%26meta%3Dsiteinfo%26siprop%26format%3Dxml&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0 Recommending WONTFIX.
You are right, it is valid xml, just not well formed. Looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&format=xml, it returns <?xml version="1.0"?><api /> I'd like for it to return an error code as no parameter/prop specified.
I tend to agree with Bryan. You're requesting no information, I don't see why its wrong to return no information.
Well you are specifying which module. If I do http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=quey&format=xml I do get an error response: <api> <error code="unknown_action" info="Unrecognized value for parameter 'action': quey"/> </api> But if I do http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&format=xml I get <api/> It should throw an error that no parameter was specified, not give no information.
Closing as WONTFIX per comment #7.
