https://github.com/tamnd/wikipedia-cli
A command line for Wikipedia and Wikimedia. Read articles, search full text, query Wikidata, fetch metrics, stream dumps.
https://github.com/tamnd/wikipedia-cli
cli command-line-tool golang json open-data scraper wayback wikidata wikimedia wikipedia
Last synced: 1 day ago
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A command line for Wikipedia and Wikimedia. Read articles, search full text, query Wikidata, fetch metrics, stream dumps.
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/tamnd/wikipedia-cli
- Owner: tamnd
- License: apache-2.0
- Created: 2026-06-13T12:58:24.000Z (about 1 month ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2026-06-29T12:13:41.000Z (16 days ago)
- Last Synced: 2026-06-29T14:12:48.153Z (16 days ago)
- Topics: cli, command-line-tool, golang, json, open-data, scraper, wayback, wikidata, wikimedia, wikipedia
- Language: Go
- Size: 575 KB
- Stars: 0
- Watchers: 0
- Forks: 0
- Open Issues: 6
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- License: LICENSE
Awesome Lists containing this project
README
# wiki
[](https://github.com/tamnd/wikipedia-cli/actions/workflows/ci.yml)
[](https://github.com/tamnd/wikipedia-cli/releases/latest)
[](https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/tamnd/wikipedia-cli)
[](https://goreportcard.com/report/github.com/tamnd/wikipedia-cli)
[](./LICENSE)
A command line for Wikipedia. `wiki` reads public Wikipedia and Wikimedia data
and prints clean, pipeable records. One pure-Go binary, no API key, no login.
[Install](#install) • [Commands](#commands) • [Usage](#usage) • [Resource URIs](#use-it-as-a-resource-uri-driver)
It talks to the public Wikimedia APIs over plain HTTPS. Every request is paced,
retried on transient failures, and sent with an honest User-Agent. Responses are
cached on disk so re-running a command is instant and easy on the servers.
`wiki` is an independent tool. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the
Wikimedia Foundation. Article content is licensed by its authors under
[CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/); please respect
the [Wikimedia API etiquette](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Etiquette) and
attribute your sources.
## Install
```bash
go install github.com/tamnd/wikipedia-cli/cmd/wiki@latest
```
Or grab a prebuilt binary from the [releases](https://github.com/tamnd/wikipedia-cli/releases),
or run the container image:
```bash
docker run --rm ghcr.io/tamnd/wiki:latest read "Alan Turing"
```
Shell completion is built in: `wiki completion bash|zsh|fish|powershell`.
## Commands
| Command | Reads |
| --- | --- |
| `wiki read ` | an article as paged text, or `--markdown`, `--html`, `--wikitext` |
| `wiki get ` | the same for pipelines; reads titles on stdin |
| `wiki summary ` | a one-paragraph extract |
| `wiki open ` | open the article in the browser, or `--print` its URL |
| `wiki search ` | full-text search; CirrusSearch operators pass through |
| `wiki suggest ` | prefix autocomplete |
| `wiki random` | one or more random articles |
| `wiki related ` | pages a reader is likely to want next |
| `wiki links ` | internal links; `--external` for URLs |
| `wiki backlinks ` | pages that link here |
| `wiki categories ` | categories the page belongs to |
| `wiki category ` | members of a category; `--type page\|subcat\|file` |
| `wiki media ` | files used on a page; `--download` to save them |
| `wiki references ` | external sources cited |
| `wiki cite ` | a formatted citation; `--format bibtex\|ris\|mla\|apa` |
| `wiki langs ` | the same article in other languages |
| `wiki info ` | page metadata |
| `wiki revisions ` | revision history, newest first; `--user` |
| `wiki diff [to]` | unified diff between revisions |
| `wiki featured [date]` | the daily featured content |
| `wiki onthisday [date]` | historical events; `--type all\|births\|deaths\|holidays` |
| `wiki top [date]` | most-viewed articles for a day or month |
| `wiki pageviews ` | per-article pageview time series |
| `wiki geosearch ` | articles near a coordinate; `--radius` |
| `wiki nearby ` | articles near another article; `--radius` |
| `wiki entity ` | a Wikidata entity; `--props`, `--lang` |
| `wiki sparql ` | SPARQL against the Wikidata Query Service |
| `wiki dump list` | files of a dump; `--wiki`, `--date` |
| `wiki dump download ` | download with resume and sha1 verify |
| `wiki dump pages ` | stream-parse a pages-articles dump |
| `wiki dump grep ` | pages matching a regexp |
| `wiki dump export [file]` | convert a dump to a Markdown or text corpus |
| `wiki sites` | known Wikimedia projects and example hosts |
| `wiki stats` | statistics for the selected wiki |
| `wiki convert ` | convert HTML or wikitext offline |
Full reference and guides live at [wikipedia-cli.tamnd.com](https://wikipedia-cli.tamnd.com).
## Usage
```bash
wiki read "Alan Turing"
wiki search "turing machine"
wiki summary "Quantum computing"
wiki info "Mars"
wiki entity Q937 --props P569,P570 # Einstein's birth and death dates
wiki sparql 'SELECT ?c ?p WHERE { ?c wdt:P31 wd:Q515; wdt:P1082 ?p } ORDER BY DESC(?p) LIMIT 5'
wiki geosearch 51.5074,-0.1278 --radius 1000
wiki dump list --wiki dewiki
```
Records come out as a list (the default on a terminal), table, markdown, JSON,
JSONL, CSV, TSV, url, or raw. The output is colored on a terminal and a progress
spinner marks slow reads; pipe it and the bytes are plain:
```bash
wiki info "Mars" -o table
wiki search "physics" -n 10 --fields title,description -o csv
wiki links "Alan Turing" -o url | head
wiki revisions "Climate change" --user Jimbo -o jsonl
wiki search "quantum" -n 5 -o jsonl | jq .title
```
Switch wikis with `-l/--lang`, `--project`, or `--site`. A pasted URL picks the
right wiki automatically:
```bash
wiki read "Berlin" -l de # German Wikipedia
wiki search "café" --project wiktionary -l fr # French Wiktionary
wiki read https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin # URL auto-selects
```
### Global flags
```
-o, --output list|table|markdown|json|jsonl|csv|tsv|url|raw (auto: list on a TTY, jsonl when piped)
--fields comma-separated columns to include
--no-header omit the heading in list, or the header row in csv/tsv/markdown
--template Go text/template applied per record
-n, --limit max records (0 = command default)
-l, --lang wiki language subdomain (default en)
--project Wikimedia project (default wikipedia)
--site explicit wiki host; overrides --lang and --project
-q, --quiet suppress the progress spinner
--color auto|always|never (color on a terminal, off when piped)
--rate min spacing between requests (default 150ms)
--timeout per-request timeout (default 1m)
--retries retry attempts on 429/5xx (default 4)
--no-cache bypass the on-disk response cache
--ua override the User-Agent
```
## Exit codes
```
0 success, at least one record
1 error
2 usage error
3 no results (a valid empty response)
4 not found (the article or entity does not exist)
```
## Use it as a resource-URI driver
The `wiki` package ships a driver that makes Wikipedia pages addressable as
resource URIs, the way a database driver registers with `database/sql`. A host
program such as [ant](https://github.com/tamnd/ant) blank-imports the package:
```go
import _ "github.com/tamnd/wikipedia-cli/wiki"
```
Then `ant` (or any program that links the package) dereferences `wikipedia://`
URIs:
```bash
ant get wikipedia://page/Alan_Turing # the article summary
ant cat wikipedia://page/Alan_Turing # just the extract text
ant ls wikipedia://page/Alan_Turing # the articles it links to
ant ls wikipedia://category/Computability # the articles in a category
ant url wikipedia://page/Alan_Turing # back to the live URL
```
Every listed link and category member is itself a `wikipedia://page/` URI, so a
host can walk the graph. See the [driver guide](https://wikipedia-cli.tamnd.com/guides/resource-uris/)
for the record shapes and the full URI grammar.
## Development
```
cmd/wiki/ thin main entry point
cli/ cobra commands, output rendering, and the progress spinner
wiki/ HTTP client, API calls, models, and the wikipedia:// driver
docs/ documentation site (Hugo, tago-doks theme)
```
```bash
make build # ./bin/wiki
make test # go test ./...
make vet # go vet ./...
```
Requires Go 1.26+.
## Releasing
Push a version tag and GitHub Actions runs GoReleaser, which builds the
archives, Linux packages, the multi-arch GHCR image, checksums, SBOMs, and a
cosign signature:
```bash
git tag -a v0.3.0 -m "v0.3.0"
git push --tags
```
The image tag carries no `v` prefix (`ghcr.io/tamnd/wiki:0.3.0`).
## License
Apache-2.0. See [LICENSE](LICENSE).