[IMPORTANT] Moved to Wiktionary - Non english languages removed

[meetDeveloper]

tl;dr.

• Will start using Wiktionary as source for Dictionary API
• API will only support English for a while and will later bring support for Spanish and French languages.
• API structure will be maintained and changes if any will only be additive in nature.
• API can be then used commercially as well as Wiktionary entries are dual-licensed to the public under both the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), more information about this here.

Hello,

I am planning to start using Wiktionary as source for Dictionary API. This will be an replacement to the current source, and due to this languages other than English will have to be dropped. Though for French and Spanish languages I will try to bring support soon.

The original texts of Wiktionary entries are dual-licensed to the public under both the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), more information about this here. Wiktionary sources information from these public domain sources.

Using Wiktionary as a source will help developers using my API a lot as they won't have to worry about using my API for commercial usage etc.

Currently Wiktionary for English language is pretty solid and we can rely on that, I have compared many entries and see no problem in using that as our source for English language.

The only downside I see is that the API will be exclusively for English language as for other languages as Wiktionary lags behind, but you can expect other languages to be added as soon as possible. Given that majority of users of this API are English speaking users, this change will affect relatively fewer users.

Users that need to have dictionary for other languages for their own personal use can use google search, google provides dictionary for many languages, I will add a detailed write up regarding how to search meaning for different languages on google later. In case you need an API to power your app, I suggest you to look at the Oxford Dictionary API, AFAIK they have Dictionary API that supports many languages.

I will maintain the structure of the API same and changes if any will only be additive in nature.

Thanking You meetDeveloper

[rrbadam]

Fine with it

[queleok]

Would it be an additional source, or a replacement for the current one?

[meetDeveloper]

@queleok This will be an replacement.

[meetDeveloper]

Wikitionary uses following as sources: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Public_domain_sources

[queleok]

I see, thank you, @meetDeveloper . I've tried analyzing the dictionary of 100k most frequently used English words according to the Wiktionary, there were some odd items like clearly French or German words. Of course, it's not a showstopper for the idea, so I guess it should be fine :)

[phibr0]

When will this change happen?

[ichmoimeyo]

HI

Have you checked out ...

https://yandex.com/dev/dictionary/ https://yandex.com/legal/dictionary_api/ FREE

http://www.collinslanguage.com/collins-api/ FREE -> 5000 p/m | £75p/m -> 30000 p/m

[meetDeveloper]

@ichmoimeyo They support English which I can get from Wiktionary.

[ichmoimeyo]

@meetDeveloper https://yandex.com/dev/dictionary/doc/dg/reference/getLangs.html [with russian emphasis] http://www.collinslanguage.com/collins-api/ [Bilingual or monolingual/bilingual]

[ms-dc]

any eta to non english language coming back? portuguese in particular

[piever]

The only downside I see is that the API will be exclusively for English language as for other languages as Wiktionary lags behind, but you can expect other languages to be added as soon as possible. Given that majority of users of this API are English speaking users, this change will affect relatively fewer users.

I confess I would love it if more languages were available. At a cursory look, it seems as if Wiktionary is reasonably good in other languages as well (I've just tested some random words on eg Italian, Portuguese and French and the definitions seem fine). Is the problem that the wiktionary API is inconsistent across languages?

Otherwise, I imagine it would cost relatively little to just support other languages as well (even if it turns that Wiktionary lags behind a bit on those, I guess it's still better than not supporting them at all).

[103sbavert]

I can't complain as I pay 0 bucks to use this api but this will break my app. Brazilian Portuguese is already broken :'(

[OultimoCoder]

Yeah I would really prefer the change didn't happen. I am using this API for a language flashcard app and this is super useful for dictionary definitions in a large variety of languages.

[1over137]

I really think there is no reason to do this. English Wiktionary has its own simple and easy to use API, but other languages are less structured. This is going to break the monolingual dictionary function in my app.

[ac-lap]

Do we have an ETA by when this migration would be complete?

[arshsaxena]

Is this migration completed?

[meetDeveloper]

@arshsaxena @ac-lap @sbeve72 @OultimoCoder @piever This change will happen today. I hope to bring other languages soon but parsing Wiktionary for other languages is a bit difficult and will take some time.

[meetDeveloper]

This migration is completed. Now the API is only for English and using Wiktionary as source also I am sending in response sourceUrls from which the definitions have been parsed and the licenses.

[1over137]

I think this will make this API completely useless, as English Wiktionary already has its own API.

[phibr0]

@arshsaxena @ac-lap @sbeve72 @OultimoCoder @piever This change will happen today. I hope to bring other languages soon but parsing Wiktionary for other languages is a bit difficult and will take some time.

If the API were open source I would really like to help here

[1over137]

wiktionary for other languages is a lot less structured though i remember seeing other projects that parses russian or french ones.

[piever]

Thanks for the notification!

I imagine (correct me if I'm wrong) that at this point, this project is primarily a "conversion layer" between the Wiktionary API and the free dictionary API. Personally, I think that it is valuable, in that it was pretty straightforward for me to work with this API, but it looks like working directly with the Wiktionary API would have been harder.

Sorry about the slight off-topic, but I was wondering... Given that (from what I see in the README) it is costly to keep up servers that provide this API, would it make sense to package this as a plain module that one could load (say from CDN) and use it directly (to convert the result of calls to the Wiktionary API)?

[ngocsangyem]

Does the source code need to be updated @meetDeveloper ?

[meetDeveloper]

@ngocsangyem yes it needs to be updated.

[ngocsangyem]

It is very nice If you update the new source code soon. I need to make some customs for the API to host my app. @meetDeveloper

[meetDeveloper]

@piever Yes you are right, Wiktionary exposes dumps that anyone can parse and use it in their own work. I was also thinking to package this API in a plain module to avoid server costs, this is something I am exploring and will likely start work in few weeks.

[Etiene]

Yeah I would really prefer the change didn't happen. I am using this API for a language flashcard app and this is super useful for dictionary definitions in a large variety of languages.

I agree!

[spacelover1]

I want to use Oxford dictionary API and have trouble passing API key and ID. I get response using postman but in code it doesn't pass them. Anyone used this API?

[abhagsain]

This migration is completed. Now the API is only for English and using Wiktionary as source also I am sending in response sourceUrls from which the definitions have been parsed and the licenses.

It'd be great if you merge your latest changes to master @meetDeveloper

[alexguillamon]

This is a useful project but others would like to run the server locally and or further make changes can you please push the latest changes to master? @meetDeveloper

[AndrewDiMola]

Has anyone created an adapted list of words that can be retrieved after the migration change? I used to use this file list as a source of truth, but because of the migration, a lot of words no longer retrieve results.

https://github.com/meetDeveloper/freeDictionaryAPI/blob/master/meta/wordList/english.txt

[KlavsKlavsen]

can anyone point to how to add a new language from wictionary to this? its really a great idea to use wictionary as source - hoping I can figure out how to add Hindi - so I can use this (and possibly improve - by using wictionary)