No response from MediaWiki API using jQuery

Question

I've tried to get some content from Wikipedia as JSON:

$.getJSON("http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&rvprop=content&titles="+title+"&format=json", function(data) {
    doSomethingWith(data);
});

But I got nothing in response. If I paste to the browser's adress bar, something like

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&rvprop=content&titles=jQuery&format=json

I get the expected content. What's wrong?

score 31 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 06 '10 at 14:39

31

You need to trigger JSONP behavior with $.getJSON() by adding &callback=? on the querystring, like this:

$.getJSON("http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&rvprop=content&titles="+title+"&format=json&callback=?", function(data) {
    doSomethingWith(data);
});

You can test it here.

Without using JSONP you're hitting the same-origin policy which is blocking the XmlHttpRequest from getting any data back.

answered Oct 06 '10 at 14:39

Nick Craver

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Thank you so much for making such a simple fiddle. I've been hammering for hours and your simple thingy made me click. Thank you. – MoshMage Sep 17 '13 at 02:03
I was testing this for hours wondering why it didn't work even though http://jsonlint.com/ said that its a valid request. Thanks! – Amer Mograbi Feb 28 '17 at 09:21
This doesn't work anymore. This is the only way I found to search Wikipedia: https://jsfiddle.net/tqeL3od2 – vault May 31 '17 at 17:56

hippietrail · Answer 2 · 2012-11-03T02:48:16.467

As the other answers point out, you are making a cross-domain request.

The one answer which works now and which they have both given is to use JSONP instead of JSON, but there is another answer called CORS Cross-origin resource sharing.

However, even though CORS is supported by MediaWiki, it is not yet enabled on Wikipedia due to subtleties between it and how Wikipedia's caching works.

There is an open bug report to get this working in Wikipedia: Enable $wgCrossSiteAJAXdomains for wikimedia sites.

Once this is resolved you will be able to make cross-domain AJAX requests to Wikipedia without needing JSONP from browsers which support CORS. The latest versions of all the major browsers now support CORS. For Internet Explorer that means version 10 which not many people are running. Version 9 has an alternative solution called xdomainrequest which didn't gain much popularity.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 06 '10 at 14:39

0

You'll need to use getJSONP if your getting data from another domain, it's part of the "same origin policy".

EDIT

Actually what Nick said, slap &callback=? on the end of your query string to invoke getJSONP.

answered Oct 06 '10 at 14:39

Ben Everard

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There is no `$.getJSONP()` :) – Nick Craver Oct 06 '10 at 14:41

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 09 '17 at 15:02

One option to perform CORS request instead of JSONP is to explicitly include parameter origin=* in request url, for example:

var title = "jQuery";

$.getJSON("https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&rvprop=content&titles="+title+"&format=json&origin=*", function(data) {
    console.log(data.query.pages);
});

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

No response from MediaWiki API using jQuery

4 Answers4

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