Help:The shortest way to your own bot

From Wikiversity

We show how to create a basic robot in the pywikipedia from work which reads the sandbox in the wikiversity:sandbox, make some changes, and put it back.

For the sake of argument, we assume the machine is a windows XP.

Here are the steps. (If at any stage there is any problem, see meta:pywikipedia further more details.) From level zero:

Download
  • Download and install python, version 2.4 or above, from here:[1] for windows
  • Download the file wikipedia.py from here:[2], putting it in the same directory as your python.exe
a dip into python
  • at the command prompt (via "Start"->"All programs" ->"Command Prompt"), go to the directory of your "python.exe" file, and run "python"
  • write at the ">>>" prompt:
print ' hello, world! \n'
Setup
family='wikiversity'
mylang='beta'
usernames['wikiverity']['beta'] = 'WRITE YOUR USER NAME HERE'
console_encoding = 'utf-8'

and save it in the file user-config.py in the same directory as the python.exe . This sets your bot up for wikiversity beta.

Login
  • Open a command prompt (see "All Programs"), and go to the directory of your python.exe, and run "python.exe login.py". This will log you in forever - the programme creates a file in the subdirectory (whose name I have forgotten).
am I properly logged in?
  • run "python test.py" and it will tell you
the robot
  • Open your notepad and write (note: the comments after the sharp signs "#" are not necessary):
#crap.py
import wikipedia  #including the wikipedia.py module
site = wikipedia.getSite() #starting object "site" corresponding to  beta.wikiversity
sand = wikipedia.Page(site, 'wikiversity:sandbox') # creating the object "sand" for the page [[wikiversity:sandbox]]
t = sand.get() #getting the text of sand
t = t +'some crap' # appending some crap to t
sand.put(t,'adding some crap to [[wikiversity:sandbox]]') #putting the new text to the sandbox, with comment
wikipedia.stopme()

and save it as "crap.py" in the same directory as "python.exe"

run it
  • go to the directory of "python.exe" and run:
python.exe crap.py
result

read special:recentchanges and see what has happened.

unicode
  • if you want to write "some crap" in other, richer languages, use a unicode string: replace 'some crap' by u'SOMECRAPINYOURLANGUAGE'. Remember to choose UTF-8 when you save your programme in notepad.
to learn more

You may start by downloading the rest of the pywikipedia framework in sourceforge [3] and reading the descriptions here [4]. The Page class has plenty of functions for you to implement.

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