can't make Wikibase work

Question

i installed the Wikibase client extension without repository as per these instructions, but now the whole wiki isn't working. every page says there are problems on the web site because it can't access the database.

is something missing? how to make the client work with wikidata.org?

Answer 1

according to this, a third party wiki [non-Wikimedia project] should also have a Wikibase repo for the client to be able to fetch data from Wikidata.

Answer 2

Currently the WikibaseClient extension is only able to retrieve data from MediaWiki SQL database tables. So, the Wikibase client should have access to the Wikibase repository database and to use the WikibaseClient extension to build a Wikidata client you need an access to the Wikidata database. It have been done this way in order to have enough performances to serve Wikidata-Wikipedia connection (with millions of articles each pulling data from multiple items and a feature that refreshes the article when an item it relies on is updated).

I don't think that the Wikidata developpment team is going to work on having an API-based backend anytime soon for third party client. I believe it should be a great project to start one.

For now you could the linked wiki extension that allows to pull data from Wikidata using the SPARQL based Wikidata query service.

Comment on theorist answer:

for the client to be able to fetch data from Wikidata.

If you setup your own repo the client is going to fetch data from your repository, not from Wikidata.

Answer 3

I don't think you can have your own Wikibase client of Wikidata, because it needs access to the Wikidata database.

If you configure $wgLBFactoryConf to use the Toolforge replica database, you don't have access to all the required tables there (e.g. if you use wikidatawiki you get "Error: 1142 SELECT command denied to user unnn@blah for table 'wb_items_per_site'", and if you use wikidatawiki_p you get "Error: 1146 Table 'wikidatawiki_p.text' doesn't exist").