# 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).