wiki-client 1.4.0

A CLI tool to fetch Wikipedia articles

wiki-client

A command-line tool to fetch Wikipedia articles and display them in the terminal.

Overview

wiki is a Python CLI that retrieves Wikipedia articles via the Wikipedia REST API and renders them with Rich for a beautiful terminal experience.

Features

• Fetch articles — Query Wikipedia by article title or search query
• Search mode — Show a ranked list of search results
• Raw output — Print plain text instead of Rich-formatted output

Requirements

• Python 3.10 or newer

The following Python packages are installed automatically:

Package	Purpose
click	CLI argument parsing
httpx	HTTP requests to the Wikipedia API
rich	Terminal formatting and rendering

Installation

Recommended: uvx (no permanent install required)

The easiest way to run wiki is with uvx from the uv toolkit. This downloads and runs the tool in an isolated environment without permanently installing it:

uvx --from wiki-client wiki "Unix shell"

Install uv (if you haven't already):

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

pip install (permanent install)

Installing via pip places the wiki command on your $PATH directly:

pip install wiki-client
wiki "Unix shell"

Install from source

git clone https://github.com/dsillman2000/wiki-client.git
cd wiki-client
pip install .
wiki "Unix shell"

Or use the provided install script:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dsillman2000/wiki-client/main/install.sh | sh

Docker

A Docker image is available on GitHub Container Registry (GHCR) with all dependencies pre-installed:

# Pull the image
docker pull ghcr.io/dsillman2000/wiki-client:latest

# Run a query
docker run --rm ghcr.io/dsillman2000/wiki-client:latest "Unix shell"

# Extract specific section
docker run --rm ghcr.io/dsillman2000/wiki-client:latest -s History "Bash"

# List sections
docker run --rm ghcr.io/dsillman2000/wiki-client:latest --ls "Python"

# Save output to file (mount current directory)
docker run --rm -v "$(pwd)":/home/wiki ghcr.io/dsillman2000/wiki-client:latest \
  "Operating system" -o os.md

Advantages:

• No local dependency installation required
• Consistent environment across systems
• Easy integration into CI/CD pipelines
• Lightweight multi-stage build (~218MB)

Usage

Basic Queries

# Fetch an article
wiki "Unix shell"

# Print plain text (no Rich formatting)
wiki "Unix shell" --raw

Search Mode

# Show search results instead of auto-fetching
wiki --search "shell programming"

Section Listing & Filtering

# List all sections in an article
wiki --list-sections "Unix shell"
wiki --ls "Unix shell"          # shorthand

# Extract a specific section (fuzzy match)
wiki -s History "Unix shell"
wiki -s "early" "Unix shell"    # matches "Early shells", "Early history", etc.

# Multiple sections
wiki -s History -s "See also" "Unix shell"

Version

wiki --version

Examples

# Get the Unix shell article
wiki "Unix shell"

# Search for shell-related articles
wiki --search "shell interpreters"

# Print raw text
wiki "Bash (Unix shell)" --raw

# List all sections
wiki --ls "Unix shell"

# Read the History section
wiki -s History "Unix shell"

Development

Quick Start

# Install in editable mode with dev dependencies
pip install -e .
pip install pytest pytest-httpx ruff

# Or use Make
make install-dev

Linting & Testing

make lint       # ruff + shellcheck + prettier
make lint-python  # ruff only
make test       # pytest

Or run directly:

ruff check wiki_client/ tests/
python -m pytest tests/ -v

Available Make Targets

make help           # Show all targets
make install        # pip install -e .
make install-dev    # Install dev dependencies
make lint           # Run all linting checks
make lint-python    # ruff
make lint-shell     # shellcheck
make lint-markdown  # prettier
make test           # pytest
make format         # prettier --write README.md
make clean          # Remove build artifacts

How It Works

1. Query resolution — Tries a direct Wikipedia REST API title lookup; falls back to a full-text search if the title returns 404.
2. Rendering — Uses Rich to render the article extract as formatted Markdown in the terminal. Pass --raw for plain-text output.

Version

1.0.0

License

MIT