# WikiExtractor [WikiExtractor.py](http://medialab.di.unipi.it/wiki/Wikipedia_Extractor) is a Python script that extracts and cleans text from a [Wikipedia database dump](http://download.wikimedia.org/). The tool is written in Python and requires Python 2.7 or Python 3.3+ but no additional library. For further information, see the [project Home Page](http://medialab.di.unipi.it/wiki/Wikipedia_Extractor) or the [Wiki](https://github.com/attardi/wikiextractor/wiki). # Wikipedia Cirrus Extractor `cirrus-extractor.py` is a version of the script that performs extraction from a Wikipedia Cirrus dump. Cirrus dumps contain text with already expanded templates. Cirrus dumps are available at: [cirrussearch](http://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/cirrussearch/). # Details WikiExtractor performs template expansion by preprocesssng the whole dump and extracting template definitions. In order to speed up processing: - multiprocessing is used for dealing with articles in parallel - a cache is kept of parsed templates (only useful for repeated extractions). ## Installation The script may be invoked directly, however it can be installed by doing: (sudo) python setup.py install ## Usage The script is invoked with a Wikipedia dump file as an argument. The output is stored in several files of similar size in a given directory. Each file will contains several documents in this [document format](http://medialab.di.unipi.it/wiki/Document_Format). usage: WikiExtractor.py [-h] [-o OUTPUT] [-b n[KMG]] [-c] [--html] [-l] [-s] [--lists] [-ns ns1,ns2] [-xns ns1,ns2] [--templates TEMPLATES] [--no-templates] [--escapedoc] [-r] [--min_text_length MIN_TEXT_LENGTH] [--filter_disambig_pages] [--processes PROCESSES] [-q] [--debug] [-a] [-v] input Wikipedia Extractor: Extracts and cleans text from a Wikipedia database dump and stores output in a number of files of similar size in a given directory. Each file will contain several documents in the format: ... Template expansion requires preprocesssng first the whole dump and collecting template definitions. positional arguments: input XML wiki dump file optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit --processes PROCESSES number of processes to use (default: number of CPU cores) Output: -o OUTPUT, --output OUTPUT directory for extracted files (or '-' for dumping to stdout) -b n[KMG], --bytes n[KMG] maximum bytes per output file (default 1M) -c, --compress compress output files using bzip Processing: --html produce HTML output, subsumes --links -l, --links preserve links -s, --sections preserve sections --lists preserve lists -ns ns1,ns2, --namespaces ns1,ns2 accepted link namespaces -xns ns1,ns2, --xml_namespaces ns1,ns2 accepted page xml namespaces -- 0 for main/articles --templates TEMPLATES use or create file containing templates --no-templates Do not expand templates --escapedoc use to escape the contents of the output ... -r, --revision Include the document revision id (default=False) --min_text_length MIN_TEXT_LENGTH Minimum expanded text length required to write document (default=0) --filter_disambig_pages Remove pages from output that contain disabmiguation markup (default=False) Special: -q, --quiet suppress reporting progress info --debug print debug info -a, --article analyze a file containing a single article (debug option) -v, --version print program version Saving templates to a file will speed up performing extraction the next time, assuming template definitions have not changed. Option --no-templates significantly speeds up the extractor, avoiding the cost of expanding [MediaWiki templates](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Templates). For further information, visit [the documentation](http://attardi.github.io/wikiextractor).