mwparserfromhell 0.4.3

Installation

The easiest way to install the parser is through the Python Package Index; you can install the latest release with pip install mwparserfromhell (get pip). On Windows, make sure you have the latest version of pip installed by running pip install --upgrade pip.

Alternatively, get the latest development version:

git clone https://github.com/earwig/mwparserfromhell.git
cd mwparserfromhell
python setup.py install

You can run the comprehensive unit testing suite with python setup.py test -q.

Usage

Normal usage is rather straightforward (where text is page text):

>>> import mwparserfromhell
>>> wikicode = mwparserfromhell.parse(text)

wikicode is a mwparserfromhell.Wikicode object, which acts like an ordinary str object (or unicode in Python 2) with some extra methods. For example:

>>> text = "I has a template! {{foo|bar|baz|eggs=spam}} See it?"
>>> wikicode = mwparserfromhell.parse(text)
>>> print(wikicode)
I has a template! {{foo|bar|baz|eggs=spam}} See it?
>>> templates = wikicode.filter_templates()
>>> print(templates)
['{{foo|bar|baz|eggs=spam}}']
>>> template = templates[0]
>>> print(template.name)
foo
>>> print(template.params)
['bar', 'baz', 'eggs=spam']
>>> print(template.get(1).value)
bar
>>> print(template.get("eggs").value)
spam

Since nodes can contain other nodes, getting nested templates is trivial:

>>> text = "{{foo|{{bar}}={{baz|{{spam}}}}}}"
>>> mwparserfromhell.parse(text).filter_templates()
['{{foo|{{bar}}={{baz|{{spam}}}}}}', '{{bar}}', '{{baz|{{spam}}}}', '{{spam}}']

You can also pass recursive=False to filter_templates() and explore templates manually. This is possible because nodes can contain additional Wikicode objects:

>>> code = mwparserfromhell.parse("{{foo|this {{includes a|template}}}}")
>>> print(code.filter_templates(recursive=False))
['{{foo|this {{includes a|template}}}}']
>>> foo = code.filter_templates(recursive=False)[0]
>>> print(foo.get(1).value)
this {{includes a|template}}
>>> print(foo.get(1).value.filter_templates()[0])
{{includes a|template}}
>>> print(foo.get(1).value.filter_templates()[0].get(1).value)
template

Templates can be easily modified to add, remove, or alter params. Wikicode objects can be treated like lists, with append(), insert(), remove(), replace(), and more. They also have a matches() method for comparing page or template names, which takes care of capitalization and whitespace:

>>> text = "{{cleanup}} '''Foo''' is a [[bar]]. {{uncategorized}}"
>>> code = mwparserfromhell.parse(text)
>>> for template in code.filter_templates():
...     if template.name.matches("Cleanup") and not template.has("date"):
...         template.add("date", "July 2012")
...
>>> print(code)
{{cleanup|date=July 2012}} '''Foo''' is a [[bar]]. {{uncategorized}}
>>> code.replace("{{uncategorized}}", "{{bar-stub}}")
>>> print(code)
{{cleanup|date=July 2012}} '''Foo''' is a [[bar]]. {{bar-stub}}
>>> print(code.filter_templates())
['{{cleanup|date=July 2012}}', '{{bar-stub}}']

You can then convert code back into a regular str object (for saving the page!) by calling str() on it:

>>> text = str(code)
>>> print(text)
{{cleanup|date=July 2012}} '''Foo''' is a [[bar]]. {{bar-stub}}
>>> text == code
True

Likewise, use unicode(code) in Python 2.

Integration

mwparserfromhell is used by and originally developed for EarwigBot; Page objects have a parse method that essentially calls mwparserfromhell.parse() on page.get().

If you’re using Pywikibot, your code might look like this:

import mwparserfromhell
import pywikibot

def parse(title):
    site = pywikibot.Site()
    page = pywikibot.Page(site, title)
    text = page.get()
    return mwparserfromhell.parse(text)

If you’re not using a library, you can parse any page using the following code (via the API):

import json
from urllib.parse import urlencode
from urllib.request import urlopen
import mwparserfromhell
API_URL = "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php"

def parse(title):
    data = {"action": "query", "prop": "revisions", "rvlimit": 1,
            "rvprop": "content", "format": "json", "titles": title}
    raw = urlopen(API_URL, urlencode(data).encode()).read()
    res = json.loads(raw)
    text = res["query"]["pages"].values()[0]["revisions"][0]["*"]
    return mwparserfromhell.parse(text)