Python Workshops for Beginners/October 25th Wikipedia project Linux setup

Download the WikipediaAPI project

  1. Right click the following file, click "Save Target as..." or "Save link as...", and save it to your Desktop directory: http://mako.cc/teaching/2014/cdsw/WikipediaAPI.tar.gz
  2. The ".tar.gz" extension on the above file indicates that it is a compressed "tarball" archive. We need to "extract" its contents. To do this, find WikipediaAPI.tar.gz on your Desktop and double-click on it. A window will pop up with some options about how to "extract" the file. Leave the defaults where they are and click the "extract" button. That will create a folder on the Desktop called WikipediaAPI containing several files.

Test the WikipediaAPI code

Start a command prompt and navigate to the Desktop/WikipediaAPI directory where the WikipediaAPI code lives. For example, if the WikipediaAPI project is at ~/Desktop/WikipediaAPI,

cd ~/Desktop/WikipediaAPI

will change you into that directory (the "~" means your home directory!), and

ls

will show you the source code files in that directory. One of the files is "wikipedia-mwc1.py", which has a ".py" extension indicating that it is a Python script. Type:

python wikipedia-mwc1.py

at the command prompt to execute the run.py Python script. Wait a little while while your computer connects to Wikipedia. You should see data from Wikipedia run by on your screen. If you don't, let a staff member know.

Success!

You are done downloading the WikipediaAPI project!