Wikipedia API: search for famous people

Question

I have the following Wikipedia API search query:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?&action=query&generator=search&gsrnamespace=0&gsrlimit=20&prop=pageimages|extracts&pilimit=max&exintro&exsentences=1&exlimit=max&continue&pithumbsize=100&gsrsearch=Albert%20Einstein

I just want to list famous people - is there a way to do that?

Answer 1

There isn't an exact way to limit your search results to only famous people. However, you can use a few different filters in with Wikipedia's CirrusSearch to roughly narrow your results to people:

• incategory: Can you find a category that includes the people you want? Categories may not be a great solution, since they may be inconveniently specific.
• linksto: Do articles about people link to a common article?
• hastemplate: Can you find a template that is used on biographies of famous people? The template {{birth date}} may be a good solution (if it's fine to limit your search to mostly non-fictional people with non-disputed known birthdates).

For example, see your same search result with hastemplate:Birth_date to see people:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?&action=query&generator=search&gsrnamespace=0&gsrlimit=20&prop=pageimages|extracts&pilimit=max&exintro&exsentences=1&exlimit=max&continue&pithumbsize=100&gsrsearch=hastemplate%3ABirth_date+Albert%20Einstein

{
"batchcomplete": "",
"continue": {
    "gsroffset": 20,
    "continue": "gsroffset||"
},
"query": {
    "pages": {
        "92733": {
            "pageid": 92733,
            "ns": 0,
            "title": "Albert A. Michelson",
            "index": 14,
            "thumbnail": {
                "source": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/Albert_Abraham_Michelson2.jpg/71px-Albert_Abraham_Michelson2.jpg",
                "width": 71,
                "height": 100
            },
            "pageimage": "Albert_Abraham_Michelson2.jpg",
            "extract": "<p><b>Albert Abraham Michelson</b> (surname pronunciation anglicized as \"Michael-son\", December 19, 1852 \u2013 May 9, 1931) was an American physicist known for his work on the measurement of the speed of light and especially for the Michelson\u2013Morley experiment.</p>"
        },
        "736": {
            "pageid": 736,
            "ns": 0,
            "title": "Albert Einstein",
            "index": 1,
            "thumbnail": {
                "source": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Einstein_1921_by_F_Schmutzer_-_restoration.jpg/76px-Einstein_1921_by_F_Schmutzer_-_restoration.jpg",
                "width": 76,
                "height": 100
            },
            "pageimage": "Einstein_1921_by_F_Schmutzer_-_restoration.jpg",
            "extract": "<p><b>Albert Einstein</b> (<span><span>/<span><span title=\"/\u02c8/ primary stress follows\">\u02c8</span><span title=\"/a\u026a/ long 'i' in 'tide'\">a\u026a</span><span title=\"'n' in 'no'\">n</span><span title=\"'s' in 'sigh'\">s</span><span title=\"'t' in 'tie'\">t</span><span title=\"/a\u026a/ long 'i' in 'tide'\">a\u026a</span><span title=\"'n' in 'no'\">n</span></span>/</span></span>; <small>German:</small> <span title=\"Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)\">[\u02c8alb\u025b\u0250\u032ft \u02c8a\u026an\u0283ta\u026an]</span>; 14 March 1879&#160;\u2013 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist.</p>"
        },
        "1139788": {
            "pageid": 1139788,
            "ns": 0,
            "title": "Alfred Einstein",
            "index": 6,
            "thumbnail": {
                "source": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Alfred_Einstein.jpg/70px-Alfred_Einstein.jpg",
                "width": 70,
                "height": 100
            },
            "pageimage": "Alfred_Einstein.jpg",
            "extract": "<p><b>Alfred Einstein</b> (December 30, 1880&#160;\u2013 February 13, 1952) was a German-American musicologist and music editor.</p>"
        },

        ...

Someday, you should be able to use Wikidata to search for entities on Wikipedia that are an instance of human. For now, we'll have to work with search filters.

Answer 2

My workaround for now is to filter search results server-side, by only showing articles that have birth_date in their revision content.

The bounty is still available if someone finds a way around this.