Perlwikibot/3.0 release

Important note

This release includes breaking changes. These release notes will guide you through the process of updating your calling code.

The 3.0 release marks a major transition. For starters, all methods use the API where possible. This means that return formats have changed in some cases. Likewise, some method calls have changed. Some of these still accept a backward-compatible form; this will be noted where applicable.

Breaking changes

All methods

Overview

Nearly all methods now return undef on failure.

Rationale

Separating errors from returned data is important. If you require the error code or error details, they are available in $bot->{'error'}->{'code'} and $bot->{'error'}->{'details'} respectively.

Impact

Any method calls which did not ignore the return value must now check for undef.

Example: get_text() and get_pages()

Overview

These methods now return undef for non-existent pages instead of an error code.

Rationale

per above

Impact

Any special cases you had for handling error codes must now look for undef instead. Calls involving pages which exist are unaffected.

New call

my $text = $bot->get_text('Non-existent page');
print $text if defined($text);

my @pages = ('Page 1', 'Page 2', 'Page 3');
my $thing = $bot->get_pages(\@pages);
foreach my $page (keys %$thing) {
    my $text = $thing->{$page};
    print "$text\n" if defined($text);
}

Old call

my $text = $bot->get_text('Non-existent page');
print $text unless ($text eq "2");

my @pages = ('Page 1', 'Page 2', 'Page 3');
my $thing = $bot->get_pages(\@pages);
foreach my $page (keys %$thing) {
    my $text = $thing->{$page};
    print "$text\n" unless ($text eq "2");
}

login()

Overview

This method now returns true on success; false on failure.

Rationale

In Perl, non-zero is true and means success. Even the syscall wrappings in Perl follow this convention.

Impact

All calls to login() which checked return values must be updated.

New call

$bot->login({
    username => "Mike's bot account",
    password => $password,
}) or die "Couldn't log in";

Old call

my $failure = $bot->login("Mike's bot account", $password);
die "Couldn't log in" if $failure;

linksearch()

Overview

This method now uses keys 'url' and 'title'

Rationale

This reduces confusion in cases where the programmer wishes to use a callback hook to do incremental processing. Without this change, accessing data would have been done with two different sets of keys.

Impact

Any call needs to have the key names updated.

New call

my $options = { max => 10, }; # I only want some results
my @links = $bot->linksearch("slashdot.org", 1, undef, $options);
foreach my $hash (@links) {
    my $url = $hash->{'url'};
    my $page = $hash->{'title'};
    print "$page: $url\n";
}

# Use a callback:
my $options = { hook => \&mysub, }; # I want to do incremental processing
$bot->linksearch("slashdot.org", 1, undef, $options) or die;
sub mysub {
    my ($res) = @_;
    foreach my $hashref (@$res) {
        my $url   = $hashref->{'url'};
        my $title = $hashref->{'title'};
        print "$title: $url\n";
    }
}

Old call

my @links = $bot->linksearch("slashdot.org", 1) or die;
foreach my $hashref (@links) {
    my $link = $hashref->{'link'};
    my $page = $hashref->{'page'};
    print "$page: $link\n";
}

what_links_here()

Overview

This method now uses keys 'title' and 'redirect'. It also returns only links (incl. redirects). Transclusions are handled by list_transclusions().

Rationale

This reduces confusion in cases where the programmer wishes to use a callback hook to do incremental processing. Without this change, accessing data would have been done with two different sets of keys.

Impact

Any call to this method needs to be evaluated as to whether it needs to be replaced with or supplemented by a call to list_transclusions(). Also, key names must be updated.

New call

my @links = $bot->what_links_here("Meta:Sandbox", undef, 1, {hook=>\&mysub});
sub mysub{
    my ($res) = @_;
    foreach my $hash (@$res) {
        my $title = $hash->{'title'};
        my $is_redir = $hash->{'redirect'};
        print "Redirect: $title\n" if $is_redir;
        print "Page: $title\n" unless $is_redir;
    }
}

Old call

# dunno

Other changes

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