Accessing main picture of wikipedia page by API

Question

Is there any way I can access the thumbnail picture of any wikipedia page by using an API? I mean the image on the top right side in box. Is there any APIs for that?

Answer 1

I there is a way to reliably get a main image for a wikipedia page - the Extension called PageImages

The PageImages extension collects information about images used on a page.

Its aim is to return the single most appropriate thumbnail associated with an article, attempting to return only meaningful images, e.g. not those from maintenance templates, stubs or flag icons. Currently it uses the first non-meaningless image used in the page.

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:PageImages

Just add the prop pageimages to your API Query:

/w/api.php?action=query&prop=pageimages&titles=Somepage&format=xml

This reliably filters out annoying default images and prevents you from having to filter them yourself! The extension is installed on all the main wikipedia pages...