Wikipedia page summary

A short summary of a Wikipedia page: the title, a description, the first paragraph as text (extract), a thumbnail and the address of the page..

What it gives you

A short summary of a Wikipedia page: the title, a description, the first paragraph as text (extract), a thumbnail and the address of the page.

Terms and limits

Wikimedia publishes API reference and rate-limit pages (api.wikimedia.org). Cache results and do not send heavy traffic. Text from Wikipedia is under a Creative Commons licence that needs credit to the authors: link back to the page.

_Read on 14 November 2026 from api.wikimedia.org._

Good habits

1. Cache answers that do not change often.
2. Handle errors: the service may be busy or down.
3. Give credit where the terms ask for it.
4. Do not put secret keys into a web page: this API needs none, but many others do.

The same request in code

curl

curl -L "https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/summary/Ludhiana"

Python

import json, urllib.request

with urllib.request.urlopen("https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/summary/Ludhiana") as r:
    data = json.load(r)
print(data['title'])

JavaScript (browser or Node.js)

const res = await fetch("https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/summary/Ludhiana");
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data.title);

A real answer

This is what the example request above returned when we called it on 14 November 2026 with the default values (it took about 0.6 s from our computer). Values such as times and temperatures change.

{
  "type": "standard",
  "title": "Ludhiana",
  "displaytitle": "<span lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"mw-page-title-main\">Ludhiana</span></span>",
  "namespace": {
    "id": 0,
    "text": ""
  },
  "wikibase_item": "Q200123",
  "titles": {
    "canonical": "Ludhiana",
    "normalized": "Ludhiana",
    "display": "<span lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"mw-page-title-main\">Ludhiana</span></span>"
  },
  "pageid": 460486,
  "thumbnail": {
    "source": "https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Dukhniwaran_Sahib.jpg/330px-Dukhniwaran_Sahib.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail",
    "width": 330,
    "height": 186
  },
  "originalimage": {
    "source": "https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Dukhniwaran_Sahib.jpg/3840px-Dukhniwaran_Sahib.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail",
    "width": 3877,
    "height": 2183
  },
  "lang": "en",
  "dir": "ltr",
  "revision": "1384573310",
  "tid": "16a4bd1c-dbc9-11f1-b087-f8b6bf1b5a8f",
  "timestamp": "2026-11-08T23:06:54Z",
  "description": "Metropolis in Punjab, India",
  "description_source": "local",
  "coordinates": {
    "lat": 30.909,
    "lon": 75.8516
  },
  "content_urls": {
    "desktop": {
      "page": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludhiana",
      "revisions": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludhiana?action=history",
      "edit": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludhiana?action=edit",
      "talk": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ludhiana"
    },
    "mobile": {
      "page": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludhiana",
      "revisions": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:History/Ludhiana",
      "edit": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludhiana?action=edit",
  ...

This is an independent directory. It is not connected with any of the services listed. Each address was called on 14 November 2026 with curl, Python, Node.js and Chrome (from a page on another site), and the answer shown is a real one. APIs change: check the service's own page before you depend on it.