In this article we look at a Python library that makes it easy to access and parse data from Wikipedia.
Installation
To install Wikipedia, simply run:
$ pip install wikipedia
Examples
The first returns a list of all articles that contain the searched query. This method will return the title and the related search.
Basic example
import wikipedia
# Searching a title
print(wikipedia.search("Scotland"))
When run you will see something like this
>>> %Run wikipediasearch.py
[‘Scotland’, ‘Scotland Yard’, ‘Scottish Gaelic’, ‘James VI and I’, ‘Patricia Scotland’, ‘List of Scottish monarchs’, ‘William III of England’, ‘Mary, Queen of Scots’, ‘Church of Scotland’, ‘Acts of Union 1707’]
You can also limit the amount of results returned by specifying the results to be returned, in this example 2
import wikipedia
# Searching a title
print(wikipedia.search("Scotland"))
print(wikipedia.search("Scotland", results = 2))
When run you will see something like this
>>> %Run wikipediasearch.py
[‘Scotland’, ‘Scotland Yard’, ‘Scottish Gaelic’, ‘James VI and I’, ‘Patricia Scotland’, ‘List of Scottish monarchs’, ‘William III of England’, ‘Mary, Queen of Scots’, ‘Acts of Union 1707’, ‘Scottish Highlands’]
[‘Scotland’, ‘Scotland Yard’]
Get a Suggestion
You can try and get a suggestion by using the suggest method, lets take this example
import wikipedia
print(wikipedia.suggest("Scotlund"))
This displayed the following for me
scotland
Display the summary of a page
You can display t he summary of a page by using the summary method and also restrict the sentences returned using the sentences parameter
import wikipedia
print(wikipedia.summary("Scotland", sentences=3))
In my case it returned the following
>>> %Run wikipediasummary.py
Scotland (Scots: Scotland, Scottish Gaelic: Alba [ˈal̪ˠapə] (listen)) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a 96-mile (154-kilometre) border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, the North Sea to the northeast and the Irish Sea to the south. The country also contains more than 790 islands, principally in the archipelagos of the Hebrides and the Northern Isles.
Getting Full Page
You can get the full Wikipedia using the page() function. It returns the page content, categories, coordinate, images, links and other metadata.
Links
Read the docs at https://wikipedia.readthedocs.org/en/latest/.
