The current meta=notifications API spits out HTML, which sucks.
Here's an example of what the output should look like (from here):
{ "query": { "notifications": { "message": { "list": [ { "id": "2958", "type": "flow-post-reply", "category": "flow-discussion", "icon": "/w/extensions/Flow/modules/notification/icon/Talk-ltr.png", "iconType": "flow-talk", "read": false, "message": { "header": "This is a header", "body": "This is the notification body" }, "timestamp": { "mw": "20151122212510", "raw": "2015-11-22T21:25:10", "formatted": "Today" }, "title": { "full": "Talk:Flow QA", "namespace": "Talk", "namespace-key": 1, "text": "Flow QA" }, "agent": { "id": 0, "name": "127.0.0.1" }, "links": { "primary": "http://localhost:8080/w/index.php?title=Topic:Sra2cr2rab4qqao9&topic_showPostId=sra2d6blrk772pvt&fromnotif=1#flow-post-sra2d6blrk772pvt", "secondary": [ { "iconType": "userAvatar", "label": "127.0.0.1", "explicit": true, "url": "http://localhost:8080/w/index.php?title=User:127.0.0.1" } ] } }, { "id": "2926", "type": "flow-topic-renamed", "category": "flow-discussion", "icon": "/w/extensions/Flow/modules/notification/icon/Talk-ltr.png", "iconType": "flow-talk", "read": true, "message": { "header": "This notification has only header", "body": "" }, "timestamp": { "mw": "20151022210626", "raw": "2015-10-22T21:06:26", "formatted": "Today" }, "title": "Talk:Flow QA", "agent": { "id": 0, "name": "127.0.0.1" }, "links": { "primary": "http://localhost:8080/w/index.php?title=Topic:Sra19tlcuba4huvd&fromnotif=1", "secondary": [ { "iconType": "userAvatar", "label": "127.0.0.1", "explicit": true, "url": "http://localhost:8080/w/index.php?title=User:127.0.0.1" } ] } }, { "id": "4321", "type": "external", "icon": "/w/extensions/Flow/modules/notification/icon/Talk-ltr.png", "category": "external", "sources": [ "commonswiki" ], "iconType": "flow-talk", "message": { "header": "You have 2 notifications on Wikimedia Commons", "body": "" }, "timestamp": { "mw": "20151022T210626", "raw": "2015-10-22T21:06:26", "formatted": "Today" }, "links": { "primary": false, "secondary": [] } } ], "unread": { "raw": 3, "formatted": "3" } }, "sources": { "commonswiki": { "title": "Commons", "url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php" } } } } }