Specifying API Keys

Is it possible to be able to specify an API key server-side that gets attached to the URL? Or is there another way of hard-coding the URL, plus the API key, and then being able to specify any actions or commands in the MediaWiki template?

For example, some server-side code:

$jsonerBaseUrl = "http://my.testapi.com/key?=xxxxxxx";

Then in MediaWiki:

{{#jsoner: f-SelectSubtree=stats | t-JsonDump}}

I would rather not expose the API key in the MediaWiki template; I'd like to have the key exist server-side instead.

Additionally, I noticed that multiple {{#jsoner}} calls are necessary for individual variables. If I wanted to make one API call and use all the data from its result in different parts of the page, how can that be done? All I see so far are examples where {{#jsoner}} makes an API call every time it is invoked. If I want to invoke it only once and use the results from that one call in different aspects of the page, how can that be accomplished?

[JonasGroeger]

For the server side API key you can look at Resolver.buildUrl(). There you could read an API key from the config. This will be the URL that curl calls. Beware that this will add the API key for all requests, even if they are to a website that does not require this API key. This might be a security risk. Ideally we would have a list of url (wildcards) and additional request properties. Since there was never an requirement for that, it wasn't implemented.

Unfortunately, with the current architecture multiple calls are required for individual variables. (if @fnk didn't change anything about that 🙉). The way MediaWiki extensions are called does not really allow for that (I'm really not sure about that. You could ask that the MediaWiki mailing list). We would require a page cache or alike for extensions. Giving it a quick google revealed this. So I guess its possible but not implemented.

If you intend to implement either of them feel free to fork and provide a pull request. We'll review it and merge if its implemented in a way other people would also benefit from it.

[fany]

If you query the same URL from within one page (possibly indirectly via templates) multiple times, recent versions of JSONer will only fetch that URL once per page view and use a cached version for the other calls. Thus, you can use one API call which gets you all the data you need and different filters for the answer to display different pieces of the data at different places of your page.

My use case is through templates, and extracting different user information based on an API call. So if a template is parameterized with {{template|UID=1}}, I want to be able to take that parameter and use it with an API call {{#jsoner: url= user={{{UID|}}} }}. From what you're describing, would the page only be cached for that given parameter, or would it be cached for every page? If I had another page with {{template|UID=12345}}, would there be any caching issues? Or would the cache of UID=1 be independent of UID=12345?

Also, the API in question also has other features, and I want to be able to specify the action template-side, while hiding the API key on the server. It looks like that I can specify the base URL (which would include the endpoint and API key), and then specify a URL like this: {{#jsoner: url=user={{{UID|}}} }}. Is that correct? From what I gathered in the source code, the user-provided URL is appended to $jsonerBaseUrl .

[JonasGroeger]

For the API key: depends on how that is passed to the target website, but yes: buildUrl is there to build the URL after all :)

[fany]

If you put the UID parameter directly in the URL you call and then use that template with different UIDs on your page, then you will effectively call different URLs, and thus nothing can be cached.
If your use case is to display information belonging to several users, then you should try to call you API so that it returns a list of all relevant users and then use the UID parameter to filter the result, e.g. {{#jsoner: url= | f-SelectRecord=uid:{{{UID|}}} }}

The API returns information about one individual user. It's parameterized with the User's ID, e.g.:

https://myapi.com/api.php?key=xxxxxx&id=12345

An example of an API return call is:

{
    "success": true,
    "message": "",
    "result": {
        "username": "D3xus",
        "postnum": "6873",
        "avatar": "https://i.imgur.com/QWB7WpF.jpg?1?dateline=1492481077",
        "usergroup": "28",
        "additionalgroups": "42,55,54,61",
        "usertitle": "I am not throwing away my shot",
        "timeonline": "11762913",
        "regdate": "1307279058",
        "lastactive": "1493229961",
        "reputation": "1081"
    }
}

I want to isolate variables within result such as username, postnum, reputation, etc. and populate a MediaWiki Infobox with that information. That's really what I'm hoping to do, instead of just listing users.

EDIT: Added more info about the API itself.

Any updates on the above? I'm getting a PHP error now on another MediaWiki installation, which I'll post an issue about.