Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/API migration

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Migration to Bot API specs

Rationale

Easier, uniform access to wiki using XML, much less prone to break in case of changes than plain HTML
Potentially much faster, should save bandwidth considerably
Would allow to minimise WebBrowser usage - less bugs, faster processing due to elimination of in-place DOM magic; also should make AWB much more portable (I suppose that Mono supports the basic WebBrowser crap we need to display previews and diffs - MaxSem)

Current write API status

Horribly immature: not tested widely enough, not fully reviewed security-wise, not enabled on any Wikimedia projects other than testwiki, even the older query functions are still subject to breaking changes.

We cannot release even a beta until it's enabled everywhere and included in a quarterly MW release, signifying some level of stability. (At least four to six months from now? - MaxSem)

Current progress on AWB side

5% - only a non-functional skeleton of ApiEdit class and this spec.

Things to be done

I assume that API editing should be made available as of version 5.0.

Development should be continued as usual
ApiEdit should be finished and maintained
Support for nested exceptions should be added to ErrorHandler.
We could test API further right now by swithching to API-based previews, for example
Political choice: session persistance
- We should probably store cookies, just like IE does in our current scheme
- Or make AWB completely profile-dependant?
- And move profiles away from registry?
  - Storing where is safer?
- And encrypt profiles with a master password?

Normalise API usage in GetLists, by making it completely dependant on ApiEdit to retrieve data from the site and check the results for errors
Write a thread-based wrapper for ApiEdit to use in interface
Kill WebControl with fire
Phase out the old editor class, probaly not worth deleting it
Make a branch of old-style AWB for usage by people from third-party wikis running older versions of MW. This branch shouldn't be able to edit Wikimedia sites. As such, we don't need it to follow the version checkpage. Its ErrorHandler shouldn't advice people to post every exception to WP:AWB/B, too.
Release 5.0 and prepare enough vaseline when people will start reporting bizarre bugs o_0

Implementation details

Editing classes

Don't use those dreaded singletons like WikiFunctions.Variables, they're hopelessly screwed up. Also, people should be able to reuse ApiEdit without having long sexual intecourse with AWB-specific stuff. Remember, Variables constructor can be called from zillion places without you even noticing this.

Discussion