Import Wikipedia Data to Google Sheets

In this guide, we’ll show how to pull data from Wikipedia directly into Google Sheets, using the API Connector add-on for Sheets.

Contents

• Before You Begin
• Part 1: Create your API Request URL
• Part 2: Pull Wikipedia API Data into Sheets
• Part 3: More Example API URLs
• Part 4: API Documentation

Before You Begin

Click here to install the API Connector add-on from the Google Marketplace.

Part 1: Create Your API Request URL

We’ll first pull in information about a random Wikipedia article, then show how to extend this to other API requests.

• Base URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1
• Endpoint: /page/random/summary

Putting it together, we get the full API Request URL:

https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/random/summary

Part 2: Pull Wikipedia API Data into Sheets

Now let’s enter that URL into API Connector.

1. Open up Google Sheets and click Extensions > API Connector > Open.
2. In the Create screen, enter the Request URL we just created
   
3. Leave OAuth set to None.
4. Under Headers, enter a key-value pair like this:
   

   User-Agent

   YOUR_CONTACT_INFO

   While this request will work without including a header, Wikipedia’s global API rules request that you set a unique User-Agent that allows them to contact you quickly. You may use an Email address or the URL to a contact page, like this:
   

5. Create a new tab and click Set current to use that tab as your data destination.
6. Name your request and click Run. A moment later you’ll see information about a random article populate your Google Sheet. If you’d like more random articles, switch to Append mode, and hit Run several times.

Part 3: More Example API URLs

Experiment with endpoints as described in the documentation here. If you just want to get started, you can try out the following requests, one at a time:

• Get metadata and an abstract about a specific page:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/summary/Google_Sheets

• List of births on a specific day:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/feed/onthisday/births/06/02

• Pageviews per day for in April 2020 for the Wikipedia article on Tiger King

  https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/metrics/pageviews/per-article/en.wikipedia/all-access/all-agents/Tiger_King/daily/20200401/20200430

• Top 1000 articles in March, 2020 (Tip: switch to the Compact report style to avoid timing out):

  https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/metrics/pageviews/top/en.wikipedia/all-access/2020/04/10

  

The article Create API Request Based on a Cell describes how you can point to a cell to dynamically change the date or endpoint in the URL, which can be very convenient for constructing requests.

Part 4: API Documentation

Official API documentation: https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/

Pageview analytics documentation: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Analytics/AQS/Pageviews