Magnus, this is done because categories (as well as all other lists) are potentially huge in size, and might require paging. You do not want to be in a situation where you asked for many titles, but only retrieved some of the data for just the first - because then you will have to continue from that point, plus re-submit all other items.
Now imagine that a generator made that list - so every time the generator will have to remake that list, just so that the query may continue from the parts of the first item. All this may create extremely in-efficient execution. Hence, it is easier for the client to make one request to get a list of categories, and more requests to get info for each category. On 7/16/07, Magnus Manske <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > I want use the api to list all pages that are in any of the categories > which are in Category:Category_redirects on commons. So I tried > > http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&generator=categorymembers&gcmcategory=Category_redirects&list=categorymembers&gcmnamespace=14 > > but apparently it's not that easy... > > IMHO "list=categorymembers" should not insist on "cmcategory", but > rather try to fall back to the generator list. > > Additionally, the 500 limit could be imposed on the actual output; as > the generator is internal, it could have 5000 or unlimited (depending > on context). > > Cheers, > Magnus > > _______________________________________________ > Mediawiki-api mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-api > _______________________________________________ Mediawiki-api mailing list [email protected] http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-api
