How exactly do you use mediawiki?

How can I use MediaWiki's API to get all the pages in a specific category?

• Here is what I tried and it shows nothing: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=allpages&format=xml&apfilterredir=all&aplimit=10&generator=categories&gcllimit=10&gclcategories=Chemistry

• Answer:

  You're using "list=allpages", when you should be using "list=categorymembers". Here's the documentation: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Categorymembers. Try something more like this instead: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=categorymembers&cmtitle=Category%3AChemistry&cmtype=page&cmlimit=50&format=jsonfm A few caveats: This query returns only immediate children of the given category. You may want to use another query with cmtype=subcat to help pick out members of child categories. Using cmtype=page as I did here is broad: it includes more than just articles, so Category:Chemistry will also have you pick up pages like "Portal:Chemistry" that you might not want. You may want to use cmnamespace=0 instead. There's a limit on how many items you can retrieve per query—50 unless your account has the "sysop" or "bot" permissions, in which case it increases to 500. Use the continue parameters to retrieve more if you need more.