This git repository contains some experiments in making use of Wikidata via Lua scripts.
MediaWiki supports Lua to make use of content from Wikidata but existing Lua scripts are not subject to serious software development.
Scribunto is an extension to embed Lua scripts in MediaWiki, the software that Wikipedia and other wikis run with. The scripts are stored as "modules" in form of wiki pages in the special module-namespace of a MediaWiki instance. Each module provides a set of functions which can be called with optional arguments from other wiki pages.
{{#invoke: Module_name | function_name | arg1 | arg2 | arg3 ... }}
To give an example ...
... TODO
The predefined table mw provides additional Scribunto libraries, for instance to load data and code from one module into another module.
There is a small tutorial on Lua for MediaWiki.
If a Lua script is not something huge, doesn't require (m)any external dependencies, and doesn't have user interaction, one can make use of Scribunto's console AJAX interface:
./consoleapi.py https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php < example.lua
Local lua libraries to access MediaWiki and Wikidata do not exist yet. One should create Lua rocks to access MediaWiki in general and WikiData in particular.
Managing program code in form of pages in a wiki is possible, but a pain compared to files in a source control system. Luckily there is git-remote-mediawiki, a bridge between MediaWiki and git.
git init
git remote add origin mediawiki::http://en.wikipedia.org/w/
git -c remote.origin.pages=module:Hello pull
...
Fetching all pages in the module-namespace is not supported yet.
If source code is created to be used as programming library by other scripts, putting it into a revision control system is only one part of serious software development. The library or module should also be covered by documentation and unit tests, and it should be distributed as software packaged. In the case of Lua, the standard package management system is Lua rocks.
Until now there seems to exist no serious coordination of Lua scripts and modules for MediaWiki in form of lua rocks. The Wikimedia habbit of just managing everything in form of wiki pages makes serious management of Lua modules difficult but not impossible.