Wikidata API

Overview

Measurement Record

What actually happened when we called this API from our own infrastructure. Every value below was recorded by the request, not copied from the provider's documentation.

Request

GET https://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=wbgetentities&ids=Q42&format=json&languages=en

Result

HTTP 200 · application/json · 284,276 bytes · compressed

Response time

1322 ms (median of 3) · fastest 1286 ms

Transport

TLSv1.3 · TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 · certificate issued by Let's Encrypt

Browser CORS

No Access-Control-Allow-Origin header — call it from a server, not the browser

Served by

mw-api-ext.eqiad.main-7c8544589d-ndgvx

Recorded

2026-08-10

Fields Returned

Top-level fields present in the response we captured, with the type and value we actually received.

Captured Response

Captured from a real request to https://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=wbgetentities&ids=Q42&format=json&languages=en on 2026-08-10. Long arrays and nested objects are truncated to keep the shape readable.

{
  "entities": {
    "Q42": {
      "pageid": 138,
      "ns": 0,
      "title": "Q42",
      "lastrevid": 2528906229,
      "modified": "2026-08-08T20:03:20Z",
      "type": "item",
      "id": "Q42",
      "labels": {},
      "descriptions": {
        "…": "(1 more fields)"
      },
      "aliases": {},
      "claims": {
        "…": "(312 more fields)"
      },
      "sitelinks": {
        "…": "(132 more fields)"
      }
    }
  },
  "success": 1
}

Implementation Example

Calls a real endpoint of this API. Replace any placeholder credentials with your own key.

const url = "https://www.wikidata.org/w/";
// Replace headers or query params with the values required by this API.
const response = await fetch(url, {
  headers: {
  "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
  }
});
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`Request failed: ${response.status}`);
const data = await response.json();
console.log(data);

import requests

url = "https://www.wikidata.org/w/"
headers = {"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"}

response = requests.get(url, headers=headers, timeout=30)
response.raise_for_status()
data = response.json()
print(data)

curl "https://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=wbgetentities&ids=Q42&format=json&languages=en"

What Can You Build?

// Fetch open data records
const headers = { 'Authorization': 'Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN' };
const response = await fetch(`https://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=help`, { headers });
const data = await response.json();
const records = data.results || data.data || data.records || [];
const items = Array.isArray(records) ? records : [records];
items.slice(0, 5).forEach(item => {
  console.log('Record:', item.title || item.name || JSON.stringify(item));
});

// Fetch data for visualization
const headers = { 'Authorization': 'Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN' };
const response = await fetch(`https://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=help`, { headers });
const data = await response.json();
const dataset = data.data || data.results || data;
console.log('Dataset loaded:', Array.isArray(dataset) ? dataset.length : 1, 'records');
document.getElementById('viz').innerHTML =
  `<pre>${JSON.stringify(dataset, null, 2)}</pre>`;

// Search and filter open data
const headers = { 'Authorization': 'Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN' };
const response = await fetch(`https://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=help`, { headers });
const data = await response.json();
const results = data.results || data.data || [];
const filtered = Array.isArray(results) 
  ? results.filter(r => r.name || r.title)
  : [results];
console.log(`Found ${filtered.length} matching records`);

Note: These code examples are AI-generated and unverified. Always refer to the official API documentation for accurate usage.

Common Errors & Troubleshooting

Generated guidance based on this API's documentation, not observed by us. Treat it as a starting point and check against the provider's own error reference.