Why does full-text search inside titles return error

Question

When I perform full-text search with Wikipedia API, I can not narrow it to titles only (srwhat=title).

So while search anywhere (default) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=search&srsearch=sql&srnamespace=14&format=xml

returns results, if I add srwhat=title, I got an error:

<api servedby="mw69">
  <error code="srsearch-title-disabled" info="title search is disabled"/>
</api>

This error is even listed in the docs ( http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Search ), but without any explanation.

Lampley

It seems there is a way to workaround this. See this answer: #27624931 – Cassaba

opensearch is a good alternative – Sobriquet

Answer 1

It means that the search engine Wikipedia uses (Lucene, I believe) does not support title search.

Constanceconstancia

You mean, there are features planned in the API that could not be supported due to particular engine used? – Lampley

MediaWiki is not just Wikipedia. Other wikis don't use Lucene, so they can support title search. But Wikipedia doesn't. – Constanceconstancia

Thanks, looking at the searching help, I also found that I can use the same operators in the search (so "intitle:" should help) so no problem with not supporting titles directly – Lampley

Answer 2

Actually, there is a way to workaround this, just add intitle: prefix to your search term:

srsearch=intitle:sql

You can find an explanation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Searching#Parameters

Cassaba