wiki.py

#!/usr/bin/python3
# based on http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/31fuae/i_made_a_command_line_tool_to_pull_summaries_from/cq1fnq9

from urllib import request, parse
import json
import sys

if len(sys.argv) < 2:
    print('Usage: {} <subject>'.format(sys.argv[0]))
    sys.exit(1)

# http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php
# https://docs.python.org/3.4/library/urllib.parse.html#url-quoting
url = 'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?' + parse.urlencode([
        ('format', 'json'),
        ('action', 'query'),
        ('prop', 'extracts'),
        ('exintro', ''),
        ('explaintext', ''),
        ('titles', ' '.join(sys.argv[1:])),
        ('continue', ''),
        ('redirects', ''),
    ])

# http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User-Agent_policy
req = request.Request(url, headers={
        'User-Agent': 'WikiTermPy/0.1',
    })

with request.urlopen(req) as f:
    data = json.loads(f.read().decode('utf-8'))

for page in data['query']['pages'].values():
    try:
        print(page['title'])
        print(page['extract'])
    except KeyError:
        print('No article found.')