Wikipedia / MediaWiki Citation API

openapi: 3.0.3
info:
  title: MediaWiki Action articles Citation API
  description: 'The MediaWiki Action API is the original programmatic interface to MediaWiki, exposed under /w/api.php on every MediaWiki installation. All operations dispatch via the ?action= query parameter. The API supports JSON, XML, and PHP serialization; JSON is the recommended format.


    Wikimedia projects strongly recommend serial (not parallel) calls, the use of maxlag for non-interactive jobs, and a contactable User-Agent header. The Action API remains the primary write interface (edit, upload, login, patrol) even where the Core REST API is also available.'
  version: '1.45'
  x-generated-from: documentation
  x-source-url: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page
  x-last-validated: '2026-05-29'
  contact:
    name: Wikimedia Foundation
    url: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Etiquette
  license:
    name: CC BY-SA 4.0
    url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
servers:
- url: https://en.wikipedia.org/w
  description: English Wikipedia
- url: https://{lang}.wikipedia.org/w
  description: Per-language Wikipedia
  variables:
    lang:
      default: en
      description: Language code
- url: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w
  description: Wikimedia Commons
- url: https://www.wikidata.org/w
  description: Wikidata
- url: https://www.mediawiki.org/w
  description: MediaWiki.org
tags:
- name: Citation
  description: generation of citation data
paths:
  /data/citation/{format}/{query}:
    get:
      tags:
      - Citation
      summary: Wikimedia REST Get Citation Data Given an Article Identifier.
      description: "Generates citation data given a URL, DOI, PMID, or PMCID.\n\nAutomated requests can be made at a rate of 1 request per second (rps).\n\nSee more at [Citoid service documentation](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Citoid)\n\nThe citation data can be requested in one of the following formats:\n  - `mediawiki`: format designed for MediaWiki to be used with `templateData`.\n    Uses [Zotero field names](https://aurimasv.github.io/z2csl/typeMap.xml).\n  - `mediawiki-basefields`: `mediawiki` format with Zotero `basefield` field names.\n  - `zotero`: format used by [Zotero](https://www.zotero.org/).\n  - `bibtex`: format used in conjunction with LaTeX documents.\n    See [bibtex.org](http://www.bibtex.org/).\n  - `wikibase`: format designed for [Wikibase](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Wikibase_Repository).\n\nStability: [unstable](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API_versioning#Unstable)\n"
      parameters:
      - name: format
        in: path
        description: The format to use for the resulting citation data
        schema:
          type: string
          enum:
          - mediawiki
          - mediawiki-basefields
          - zotero
          - bibtex
          - wikibase
        required: true
      - name: query
        in: path
        description: 'URL of an article, DOI, PMCID or PMID in the URL-encoded format. Note that on the Swagger-UI doc page you don''t need to URI-encode the parameter manually, it will be done by the docs engine.

          '
        required: true
        schema:
          type: string
      - name: Accept-Language
        in: header
        description: 'For some articles the result depends on the `Accept-Language` header, so provide it if localized content is required.

          '
        schema:
          type: string
      responses:
        '200':
          description: The citation data in the requested format
          content:
            application/json; charset=utf-8;:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/result'
            application/x-bibtex; charset=utf-8:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/result'
        '404':
          description: Citation data was not found.
          content:
            application/problem+json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/problem'
      operationId: getCitation
      x-monitor: false
      x-microcks-operation:
        delay: 0
        dispatcher: FALLBACK
components:
  schemas:
    result:
      required:
      - title
      - url
      - itemType
      type: object
      properties:
        itemType:
          type: string
        title:
          type: string
        url:
          type: string
    problem:
      required:
      - type
      type: object
      properties:
        type:
          type: string
        title:
          type: string
        detail:
          type: string
        instance:
          type: string
  securitySchemes:
    BearerAuth:
      type: http
      scheme: bearer
      description: OAuth 2.0 bearer token from meta.wikimedia.org
    CookieAuth:
      type: apiKey
      in: cookie
      name: '{wiki}wikiUserID'
      description: Session cookie obtained via action=login or action=clientlogin