Page MenuHomePhabricator

wbsearchentities `props` param is undocumented
Open, Needs TriagePublicFeature

Description

Feature summary : I would like to (I assume) use the props param on wbsearchentities.

The documentation currently says: https://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=help&modules=wbsearchentities

props:

Return these properties for each entity. 
Values (separate with | or alternative): url
Default: url

but it doesn't explain what the URL should be.

The example at the bottom of the page passes the value as:

https://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=wbsearchentities&search=alphabet&language=en&props=

which I assume is a mistake (why would you pass an empty value?)

Use case(s) : Using wbsearchentities would be good. Or at least understanding what it does.

Benefits :

This has confused multiple people. For example on telegram: https://t.me/c/1224298920/93369 and https://t.me/c/1224298920/100604 and myself

Event Timeline

this post on telegram seems to explain (https://t.me/c/1224298920/123559) but it's still very confusing. maybe just remove this option? or deprecate?

(why would you pass an empty value?)

Because you don’t need the URL? The default is props=url, so setting props= represents a change from the default behavior (include less data in the response).

yeah sorry I understand now. I believe that I and the two other people on telegram were confused and thought you could pass a url (and not the literal string "url") as a value for "props".

Okay, I see. Anyway – we should definitely be able to document the props (even if there’s just one of them at the moment) – see the query+info docs for comparison: MediaWiki supports adding a documentation message for each supported value.