wikitables

Import tables from any Wikipedia article as a dataset in Python

Installing

pip install wikitables

Usage

Importing

Importing all tables from a given article:

from wikitables import import_tables
tables = import_tables('List of cities in Italy')  # returns a list of WikiTable objects

To import an article from a different language, simply add the Wikipedia language code as an argument to import_tables. This will also show country names in the given language.

tables = import_tables('İtalya\'daki_şehirler_listesi', 'tr')  # returns a list of WikiTable objects

Accessing

Iterate over a table's rows:

print(tables[0].name)
for row in tables[0].rows:
    print('{City}: {Area(km2)}'.format(**row))

output:

List of cities in Italy[0]
Milan: 4,450.11
Naples: 3,116.52
Rome: 3,340.41
Turin: 1,328.40
...

Or return the table encoded as JSON:

tables[0].json()

output:

[
    {
        "City": "Milan",
        "Population January 1, 2014": "6,623,798",
        "Density(inh./km2)": "1,488",
        "Area(km2)": "4,450.11"
    },
    {
        "City": "Naples",
        "Population January 1, 2014": "5,294,546",
        "Density(inh./km2)": "1,699",
        "Area(km2)": "3,116.52"
    },
    ...

Table Head

After import, table column names may been modified by setting a new header:

table.head = [ 'newfield1', 'newfield2', 'newfield3' ]

This change will be recursively reflected on all of a given tables rows.

Commandline

Wikitables also comes with a simple cli tool to fetch and output table json:

# from article name
wikitables 'List of cities in Italy'

# from URL
wikitables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_spectrum#ITU

Creating list of DataFrames

from wikitables import import_tables
import pandas as pd

def get_df_from_table_object(table):
    rows = [row for row in table.rows]
    return pd.DataFrame(rows)

def get_list_of_df_of_wiki_article(wiki_title):
    tables = import_tables(wiki_title)
    return [get_df_from_table_object(table) for table in tables]

print(get_list_of_df_of_wiki_article(wiki_title='List of cities in Italy'))

output:

[    Rank         City 2011    Census 2020    Estimate                Change    Region
0      1         Rome        2617175          2856133     9.130379130168986     Lazio
1      2        Milan        1242123          1378689     10.99456334034552  Lombardy
2      3       Naples         962003           959188   -0.2926186300874267  Campania
3      4        Turin         872367           875698   0.38183470947434905  Piedmont
4      5      Palermo         657651           663401    0.8743239195257102    Sicily
..   ...          ...            ...              ...                   ...       ...
139  140  Battipaglia          51133            51005  -0.25032757710284903  Campania
140  141          Rho          50686            50904    0.4300990411553407  Lombardy
141  142       Chieti          54305            50770    -6.509529509253287   Abruzzo
142  143      Scafati          50794            50686   -0.2126235382131747  Campania
143  144    Scandicci          50309            50645    0.6678725476554792   Tuscany

[144 rows x 6 columns]]

Roadmap

Some planned and wishlist features:

• Type guesing from MediaWiki template values