A Metabook describes a collection of articles and chapters together with some metadata like title or version. The actual data (e.g. the wikitext of articles) is not contained in the Metabook.
The Metabook is a simple dictionary containing lists, integers, strings (which are Unicode-safe; they are represented as unicode in Python) and other dictionaries. When read from/written to a file or sent over the network, it"s serialized in JSON format.
Every dictionary contained in the Metabook (and the Metabook dicionary itself) has a type. The different types are described below. The Metabook dictionary itself has type "collection".
type (string):
Fixed value "collection"
version (integer):
Protocol version, 1 for now
title (string, optional):
Title of the collection
subtitle (string, optional):
Subtitle of the collection
editor (string, optional):
Editor of the collection
items (list of article and/or chapter objects, can be empty):
Chapters and top-level articles contained in the collection
licenses (list of license objects):
List of licenses for articles in this collection
type (string)
Fixed value "license"
name (string)
Name of license
mw_license_url (string, optional)
URL to license text in wikitext format
mw_rights_page (string, optional)
Title of article containing license text
mw_rights_icon (string, optional)
URL of license icon
mw_rights_url (string, optional)
URL to license text in any format
mw_rights_text (string, optional)
Name and possibly a short description of the license
type (string):
Fixed value "article"
content-type (string):
Fixed value "text/x-wiki"
title (string):
Title of this article
displaytitle (string, optional):
Title to be used in rendered output instead of the real title
revision (string, optional):
Revision of article, i.e. oldid for MediaWiki. If omitted, the latest revision is used.
timestamp (integer, optional):
UNIX timestamp (seconds since 1970-1-1) of the revision of this article
source-url (string)
URL of source wiki. This URL is the key to an item in the sources dictionary in the content.json object of the ZIP file (see zipfile.txt).
type (string):
Fixed value "chapter"
title (string):
Title of this chapter
items (list of article objects, can be empty):
List of articles contained in this chapter
type (string)
Fixed value "source"
system (string):
Fixed value "MediaWiki" for now
url (string, optional):
"home" URL of source, e.g. "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page" (same as key for this entry)
name (string):
Unique name of source, e.g. "Wikipedia (en)"
language (string)
2-character ISO code of language, e.g. "en"
interwikimap (dictionary mapping prefixes to interwiki objects, optional)
Describes interwikimap for this wiki, cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&meta=siteinfo&siprop=interwikimap
Interwiki entries can describe language links and interwiki links
type (string)
Fixed value "interwiki"
prefix (string)
Prefix is MediaWiki links, i.e. the part before the ":". This is the key in the interwikimap attribute of a source object.
url (string)
URL template, the string "$1" gets replaced with the link target (w/out prefx)
local (bool, optional)
True if the interwiki link is a "local" one
language (string, optional)
Name of the language, if this interwiki describes language links
Given in JSON notation:
{
"type": "collection",
"version": 1,
"title": "This is the Collection Title",
"subtitle": "An optional subtitle",
"editor": "Jane Doe",
"items": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Top-level Article",
"content-type": "text/x-wiki"
},
{
"type": "chapter",
"title": "First Chapter",
"items": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "First Article in Chapter",
"revision": "1234",
"timestamp": 122331212312,
"content-type": "text/x-wiki"
"source-url": "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page",
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Second Article in Chapter",
"content-type": "text/x-wiki"
"source-url": "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page",
}
]
},
],
"licenses": [
{
"type": "license",
"name": "GFDL",
"mw_license_url": "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License"
}
]
}