WikipediaFS is a virtual filesystem which allows users to view and edit the articles of any MediaWiki-based site as if they were real files on a local disk drive. This enables a user to edit articles directly with any text editor.^[2] WikipediaFS is developed primarily by Mathieu Blondel on SourceForge.net.^[3]

WikipediaFS is implemented in Python and uses the FUSE kernel module. The file system works by lazily downloading and uploading article sourcetexts — only sending HTTP requests to the selected site when a file is accessed. (Reading a file corresponds to a GET HTTP request, writing to a POST HTTP request.)

Advantages

• Editing a long Wikipedia article can sometimes turn out to be painful and time-consuming due to web-forms limitations. Instead, when WikipediaFS is mounted on a directory, articles become like real files in that directory: it is thus possible to use a text-editor to edit files. Text-editors are generally more stable and less sluggish than browsers and have useful features such as spell checking and wiki syntax highlighting.
• It is possible to write programs or bots transparently as if they dealt with simple files because WikipediaFS takes care of the HTTP layer. For example, WikipediaFS could be used to perform a massive content migration from one MediaWiki site to another.

Disadvantages

• The project is no longer maintained as of 2007; the software has since been deprecated.
• It is difficult to go from-page-to-page; users must know the exact name of a page in order to edit it, as WikipediaFS has no local knowledge of what pages exist and which don't.

See also

• Wikifs

References

External links

• Official website
• MediaWiki Manual:External editors
• proposals for improvement
• Collection of all available patches