Access the Wikipedia API with Python, Flask, and Requests

wikipedia_page_api.py

"""
Flask example using Requests library syntax to build
a Wikipedia API query - no templates, just raw HTML
written straight into the browser.
This code was partly written by ChatGPT.
"""

from flask import Flask, jsonify, request, redirect, url_for
import random, requests

app = Flask(__name__)

# list of random topics
mylist = ["David Bowie", "Marie Curie", "foobar", "Blade Runner", "Sherlock Holmes", "API", "Vespa", "St. Augustine, Florida", "arrabbiata"]

@app.route('/', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def index():
    # filling the form input and Return/Enter will submit a POST request
    if request.method == 'POST':
        page_title = request.form['userinput']
        return redirect( url_for('get_main_points', page_title=page_title) )

    # or a GET request writes this to the browser
    pagename = random.choice(mylist)
    html = "<h1>Wikipedia API calls</h1><ol>"
    html += "<li><a href='/get_main_points/" + pagename + "'>Click to see "
    html += pagename
    html += " info</a><br><br></li><li><form method='POST'>"
    html += "Or you can type any name: "
    html += "<input type='text' id='userinput' name='userinput'></form>"
    html += "</li></ol>"

    return html

@app.route('/get_main_points/<string:page_title>', methods=['GET'])
def get_main_points(page_title):
    # set up API request
    endpoint = 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php'
    params = {
        'action': 'query',
        'format': 'json',
        'titles': page_title,
        'prop': 'extracts',
        'explaintext': True,
        'exsectionformat': 'wiki',
        'redirects': True,
        'exsentences': 3  # get first 3 sentences of the page
    }

    # make API request - using Requests library
    response = requests.get(endpoint, params=params).json()

    # extract main points from API response
    page_id = list(response['query']['pages'].keys())[0]
    page_title = response['query']['pages'][page_id]['title']
    page_extract = response['query']['pages'][page_id]['extract']

    # return main points as JSON response
    # return jsonify({
    #     'page_title': page_title,
    #     'page_extract': page_extract
    # })

    heading = '<h1>' + page_title + '</h1>'
    text = '<p>' + page_extract + '</p>'
    link = '<p><a href="' + url_for('index') + '">Return to index</a></p>'
    return heading + text + link

if __name__ == '__main__':
    # app.run(debug=True)
    app.run(host='0.0.0.0', port=4999, debug=True)