WhatIs.this
WhatIs.this is a quick probe for the meaning and metadata of concepts through Wikipedia.
Showcase
require 'whatis'
sparta = WhatIs.this('Sparta')
# => #<ThisIs Sparta [img] {37.081944,22.423611}>
sparta.coordinates
# => #<Geo::Coord 37.081944,22.423611>
sparta.image
# => "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Sparta_territory.jpg"
sparta.describe
# => Sparta
# title: "Sparta"
# description: "city-state in ancient Greece"
# coordinates: #<Geo::Coord 37.081944,22.423611>
# extract: "Sparta (Doric Greek: ; Attic Greek: ) was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece."
# image: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Sparta_territory.jpg"
# Fetch additional information: categories & translations:
sparta = WhatIs.this('Sparta', categories: true, languages: 'el')
# => #<ThisIs Sparta/Αρχαία Σπάρτη, 7 categories [img] {37.081944,22.423611}>
sparta.describe
# => Sparta
# title: "Sparta"
# description: "city-state in ancient Greece"
# coordinates: #<Geo::Coord 37.081944,22.423611>
# categories: ["Former countries in Europe", "Former populated places in Greece", "Locations in Greek mythology", "Populated places in Laconia", "Sparta", "States and territories disestablished in the 2nd century BC", "States and territories established in the 11th century BC"]
# languages: {"el"=>#<ThisIs::Link el:Αρχαία Σπάρτη>}
# extract: "Sparta (Doric Greek: ; Attic Greek: ) was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece."
# image: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Sparta_territory.jpg"
sparta.languages['el'].resolve
# => #<ThisIs Αρχαία Σπάρτη [img]>
# Multiple entities at once:
WhatIs.these('Paris', 'Berlin', 'Rome', 'Athens')
# => {
# "Paris"=>#<ThisIs Paris [img] {48.856700,2.350800}>,
# "Berlin"=>#<ThisIs Berlin [img] {52.516667,13.388889}>,
# "Rome"=>#<ThisIs Rome [img] {41.900000,12.500000}>,
# "Athens"=>#<ThisIs Athens [img] {37.983972,23.727806}>
# }Applications
The gem is intended to be a simple tool for entities resolution/normalization. Possible usages:
- You have a lot of user-entered answers to "What city are you from". Through
WhatIs.theseit is pretty easy to resolve them to "canonical" city name (e.g. "Warsaw", "Warszawa", "Warsaw, Poland" => "Warsaw") and map locations; - Quick check on user-entered cultural objects, "what is it";
- Canonical Wikipedia-powered translations of toponyms, movie titles and historical people;
- ...and so-on.
Features/problems
- Fetches Wikipedia data by entity names: canonical title, geographical coordinates, main page image, the first phrase, short entity description from Wikidata;
- Optionally fetches links to other Wikipedia languages and list of page categories;
- Fetches any number of Wikipedia pages in minimal number of API requests (50-page batches);
- Note that despite this optimization, Wikipedia API responses are not very small, so resolving, say, 1000 entities, will errrm take some time;
- Works with any language version of Wikipedia:
WhatIs[:de].this('München')
# => #<ThisIs München [img] {48.137222,11.575556}>- Handles not found pages and allows to search them in place:
g = WhatIs.this('Guardians Of The Galaxy') # Wikipedia pages is case-sensitive
# => #<ThisIs::NotFound Guardians Of The Galaxy>
g.search(3)
# => [#<ThisIs::Ambigous Guardians of the Galaxy (11 options)>, #<ThisIs Guardians of the Galaxy (film)>, #<ThisIs Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2>]- Handles disambiguation pages:
g = WhatIs.this('Guardians of the Galaxy')
# => #<ThisIs::Ambigous Guardians of the Galaxy (11 options)>
g.describe
# => Guardians of the Galaxy: ambigous (11 options)
# #<ThisIs::Link Marvel Comics teams/Guardians of the Galaxy (1969 team)>: Guardians of the Galaxy (1969 team), the original 31st-century team from an alternative timeline of the Marvel Universe (Earth-691)
# #<ThisIs::Link Marvel Comics teams/Guardians of the Galaxy (2008 team)>: Guardians of the Galaxy (2008 team), the modern version of the team formed in the aftermath of Annihilation: Conquest
# <...skip...>
# Usage: .variants[0].resolve, .resolve_all
g.variants[1].resolve(categories: true)
# => #<ThisIs Guardians of the Galaxy (2008 team), 13 categories>- Provides command-line tool:
$ whatis Paris Berlin Rome
Paris: Paris {48.856700,2.350800} - capital city of France
Berlin: Berlin {52.516667,13.388889} - capital city of Germany
Rome: Rome {41.900000,12.500000} - capital city of Italy
$ whatis --help
Usage: `whatis [options] title1, title2, title3
Options:
-l, --language CODE Which language Wikipedia to ask, 2-letter code. "en" by default
-t, --languages [CODE] Without argument, fetches all translations for entity.
With argument (two-letter code) fetches only one translation.
By default, no translations are fetched.
--categories Whether to fetch entity categories
-f, --format FORMAT Output format: one line per entity ("short"), several lines per
entity ("long"), or "json". Default is "short".
-h, --help Show this message
Note on disambiguation pages
Unfortunately, Wikipedia does not provide a consistent way to tell disambiguation pages from others, the only way is to know is to see the page's categories (different for different languages). Therefore, currently, disambiguation works currently for English, Ukrainian, Russian and Belorussian. Feel free to contribute disambiguation categories for your language versions!
Usage
gem install whatis or add gem "whatis" to your Gemfile.
Then use it as library (see docs for WhatIs and its methods)
or command-line tool (try $ whatis --help).
How it works
WhatIs.this is a small brother of large reality. Under
the hood, it uses infoboxer semantic Wikipedia client.
Most of the information is taken from API response metadata, but for some features (ambiguities resolution), Wikipedia page is actually parsed.
Unlike reality (which tries to be comprehensive), WhatIs.this tries to be as simple yet useful,
as possible.
Author
License
MIT