How do I get the current MediaWiki version using the API? - mediawiki

Question

Using the MediaWiki API how do I get the version number?

Answer 1

You need /w/api.php?action=query&format=json&prop=&meta=siteinfo. That will give you all you need (and a lot more). Here's what it returns from en.wikipedia.org:
{
"batchcomplete": "",
"query": {
"general": {
"mainpage": "Main Page",
"base": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page",
"sitename": "Wikipedia",
"logo": "//en.wikipedia.org/static/images/project-logos/enwiki.png",
"generator": "MediaWiki 1.30.0-wmf.2",
"phpversion": "5.6.99-hhvm",
"phpsapi": "srv",
"hhvmversion": "3.18.2",
"dbtype": "mysql",
"dbversion": "10.0.29-MariaDB",
"imagewhitelistenabled": "",
"langconversion": "",
"titleconversion": "",
"linkprefixcharset": "",
"linkprefix": "",
"linktrail": "/^([a-z]+)(.*)$/sD",
"legaltitlechars": " %!\"$&'()*,\\-.\\/0-9:;=?#A-Z\\\\^_`a-z~\\x80-\\xFF+",
"invalidusernamechars": "#:",
"fixarabicunicode": "",
"fixmalayalamunicode": "",
"git-hash": "b40805ff461884e48400adb3000fa06f9b6ff4c9",
"git-branch": "wmf/1.30.0-wmf.2",
"case": "first-letter",
"lang": "en",
"fallback": [],
"fallback8bitEncoding": "windows-1252",
"writeapi": "",
"maxarticlesize": 2097152,
"timezone": "UTC",
"timeoffset": 0,
"articlepath": "/wiki/$1",
"scriptpath": "/w",
"script": "/w/index.php",
"variantarticlepath": false,
"server": "//en.wikipedia.org",
"servername": "en.wikipedia.org",
"wikiid": "enwiki",
"time": "2017-06-05T23:28:54Z",
"misermode": "",
"uploadsenabled": "",
"maxuploadsize": 4294967296,
"minuploadchunksize": 1024,
"galleryoptions": {
"imagesPerRow": 0,
"imageWidth": 120,
"imageHeight": 120,
"captionLength": "",
"showBytes": "",
"mode": "traditional"
},
"thumblimits": [
120,
150,
180,
200,
220,
250,
300,
400
],
"imagelimits": [
{
"width": 320,
"height": 240
},
{
"width": 640,
"height": 480
},
{
"width": 800,
"height": 600
},
{
"width": 1024,
"height": 768
},
{
"width": 1280,
"height": 1024
}
],
"favicon": "//en.wikipedia.org/static/favicon/wikipedia.ico",
"centralidlookupprovider": "CentralAuth",
"allcentralidlookupproviders": [
"CentralAuth",
"local"
],
"interwikimagic": "",
"magiclinks": {
"ISBN": "",
"PMID": "",
"RFC": ""
},
"wmf-config": {
"wmfMasterDatacenter": "eqiad"
},
"pageviewservice-supported-metrics": {
"pageviews": {
"pageviews": ""
},
"siteviews": {
"pageviews": "",
"uniques": ""
},
"mostviewed": {
"pageviews": ""
}
}
}
}
}
I'm guessing you need the "generator" property there. If you like you can test it out in Wikipedia's API sandbox.