Ok so I'm trying to get information from Wikidata about movies, take this movie for example: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24871
On the page the data is clearly displayed in a readable format, however when you trying to extract it via the API you get this: https://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=wbgetentities&ids=Q24871
Here is a section from it:
"P272": [
{
"id": "q24871$4721C959-0FCF-49D4-9265-E4FAC217CB6E",
"mainsnak": {
"snaktype": "value",
"property": "P272",
"datatype": "wikibase-item",
"datavalue": {
"value": {
"entity-type": "item",
"numeric-id": 775450
},
"type": "wikibase-entityid"
}
},
"type": "statement",
"rank": "normal"
},
{
"id": "q24871$31777445-1068-4C38-9B4B-96362577C442",
"mainsnak": {
"snaktype": "value",
"property": "P272",
"datatype": "wikibase-item",
"datavalue": {
"value": {
"entity-type": "item",
"numeric-id": 3041294
},
"type": "wikibase-entityid"
}
},
"type": "statement",
"rank": "normal"
},
{
"id": "q24871$08009F7A-8E54-48C3-92D9-75DEF4CF3E8D",
"mainsnak": {
"snaktype": "value",
"property": "P272",
"datatype": "wikibase-item",
"datavalue": {
"value": {
"entity-type": "item",
"numeric-id": 646968
},
"type": "wikibase-entityid"
}
},
"type": "statement",
"rank": "normal"
},
{
"id": "q24871$CA53B5EB-1041-4701-A36E-7C348FAC984E",
"mainsnak": {
"snaktype": "value",
"property": "P272",
"datatype": "wikibase-item",
"datavalue": {
"value": {
"entity-type": "item",
"numeric-id": 434841
},
"type": "wikibase-entityid"
}
},
"type": "statement",
"rank": "normal",
"references": [
{
"hash": "50f57a3dbac4708ce4ae4a827c0afac7fcdb4a5c",
"snaks": {
"P143": [
{
"snaktype": "value",
"property": "P143",
"datatype": "wikibase-item",
"datavalue": {
"value": {
"entity-type": "item",
"numeric-id": 11920
},
"type": "wikibase-entityid"
}
}
]
},
"snaks-order": [
"P143"
]
}
]
}
],
The problem is I'm not sure how to convert sections like that into readable text. I get the API is calling a link between a class and its properties using unique IDs but I'm still stuck.
Is this actually possible at present or am I barking up the wrong tree?
What you should be looking for are the numeric-ids in each statements and add a leading Q to recover your wikidata ids, which should result to ['Q775450', 'Q3041294', 'Q646968', 'Q434841', 'Q11920']
[update: you can now directly access the Q id at mainsnak.datavalue.value.id, instead of having to build it from the numeric-id]
This can be done using wikibase-sdk (a JS lib I developed) wbk.simplify.claims function
Once you got those ids, you just need to request entities labels using the wbgetentities API:
https://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=wbgetentities&ids=Q775450|Q3041294|Q646968|Q434841|Q11920&format=json&props=labels
you can even get results for only some languages, using the languages parameter: https://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=wbgetentities&ids=Q775450|Q3041294|Q646968|Q434841|Q11920&format=json&props=labels&languages=en|de|fr