It's not a bug in the API either. A generator is supposed to generate a list of pages, not return all sorts of extra information.

In T86982#981099, @Anomie wrote:

It's not a bug in the API either. A generator is supposed to generate a list of pages, not return all sorts of extra information.

Given that a second API request to list=search specifically for this information is out of the question for performance reasons, how do you suggest we proceed? It seems there are two options:

1. Make the generator return this extra information
2. Make the list=search query also be able to provide the extra data that the generator can provide (e.g. descriptions from the PageTerms module)

Are there other options as well?

Change 186942 had a related patch set uploaded (by BearND):
Enable search suggestions in full text search task

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/186942

Patch-For-Review

Change 186942 merged by Dbrant:
Enable search suggestions in prefix search task

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/186942

@Deskana, @Anomie : any further action required on this card, or can this be marked resolved?

I don't think this is resolved. We have a hack in the app that makes this work, but fundamentally it's still a hack.

I wrote this task with a specific solution in mind which I think @Anomie disagrees with, but really this is about a more generic problem and I don't really mind what the solution is.

Let me reword the title.

With the reworded description, I'm going to close this as Declined now.

This is a regression. The API used to work, but searchinfo was removed, which broke my code.

Do the MediaWiki developers announce non-backwards compatible changes to the API?

If there is a genuine reason why it isn't possible to include the searchinfo in the generator output then it should be included in the documentation here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=help&modules=query%2Bsearch

In T86982#1040248, @edwardbetts wrote:

If there is a genuine reason why it isn't possible to include the searchinfo in the generator output then it should be included in the documentation here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=help&modules=query%2Bsearch

Generators generate a list of pages, they don't output extra data.

It's not up to the API help to explain design decisions.

The code that generates the API response has the totalhits information, but doesn't included it in the results. What's the harm in including it? For years, the value of totalhits was available via the search generator query, now it has been removed.

I will workaround the missing totalhits information by making a list=search request followed by a generator=search request.