DotNetWikiBot Framework

Purpose

DotNetWikiBot Framework is intended to help with many complicated and routine tasks of wiki site development and maintenance. DotNetWikiBot Framework is a clean full-featured client API, that allows you to build programs and web robots easily to manage information on MediaWiki-powered sites. DotNetWikiBot Framework is also good for learning C# and .NET.

Some facts about DotNetWikiBot Framework

• DotNetWikiBot Framework is an easy-to-learn and easy-to-use library (API) for programming client applications and web robots, that could help in construction and maintenance of wiki sites.
• DotNetWikiBot is compiled as a .NET dynamic link library (.dll file), that could be used directly or in other products, based on DotNetWikiBot Framework.
• DotNetWikiBot is written in C#, based on Microsoft® .NET Framework 2.0 and primarily targets the sites running free MediaWiki software.
• Using Mono framework, DotNetWikiBot can work under Linux, Unix, BSD, Solaris and Mac OS X as well as under Windows.
• Any .NET language can be used to access DotNetWikiBot library functions, including Visual Basic, Managed C++, JScript, J# and F#. Only minimal programming skills are required to make bots with DotNetWikiBot Framework, it allows to build bots in fast and simple manner.
• DotNetWikiBot source code is located in a single .cs file, that could be easily changed and recompiled to suite your needs. It requires only C# compiler, no other tools.
• DotNetWikiBot Framework is good for educational purposes. It's source code is written in a plain classic manner, allowing to learn object-oriented programming, .NET features, web robot making, regular expressions and advanced XML parsing in a short time.
• DotNetWikiBot doesn't require installation. It is downloaded in a single small .zip file along with compiled documentation, source codes, compilation batch file, sample GUI Utility for batch upload of files to wiki sites and ready-to-use sample bot script.
• DotNetWikiBot is free.

Short tutorial

There are only 3 types of objects in DotNetWikiBot Framework: Site, Page and PageList. They are used as follows.

using DotNetWikiBot;	// Reference DotNetWikiBot namespace for easy access

class MyBot : Bot	// Derive your bot class from framework's Bot class
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        // Firstly make Site object, specifying site's URL and your bot account
        Site enWiki = new Site("http://en.wikipedia.org", "myBotLogin", "myPassword");
        // Then make Page object, specifying site and page title in constructor
        Page p = new Page(enWiki, "Art");
        // Load actual page text from live wiki
        p.Load();
        // Add "Visual arts" category link to "Art" page's text
        p.AddToCategory("Visual arts");
        // Save "Art" article's text back to live wiki with specified comment
        p.Save("comment: category link added", true);

        // Make empty PageList object, representing collection of pages
        PageList pl = new PageList(enWiki);
        // Fill it with 100 pages, where "nuclear disintegration" is mentioned
        pl.FillFromGoogleSearchResults("nuclear disintegration", 100);
        // Load texts and metadata of all found pages from live wiki
        pl.LoadEx();
        // Now suppose, that we must correct some typical mistake in all our pages
        foreach (Page i in pl)
            // In each page we will replace one phrase with another
            i.text = i.text.Replace("fusion products", "fission products");
        // Finally we'll save all changed pages to wiki with 5 seconds interval			
        pl.SaveSmoothly(5, "comment: mistake autocorrection", true);
		
        // Now clear our PageList so we could re-use it
        pl.Clear();
        // Fill it with all articles in "Astronomy" category and it's subcategories
        pl.FillFromCategoryTree("Astronomy");
        // Download and save all PageList's articles to specified local XML file
        pl.SaveXMLDumpToFile("Dumps\\ArticlesAboutAstronomy.xml");		
    }
}

More examples are available in sample bot script in DotNetWikiBot package.