jackwener/OpenCLI · error · CommandExecutionError

wikipedia page failed: HTTP ${resp.status}

Error message

wikipedia page failed: HTTP ${resp.status}

What it means

When the Wikipedia API responds with a non-OK HTTP status (404, 403, 5xx, etc.), page.js throws a CommandExecutionError with the raw status code. Unlike the wikidata helper, this command does not special-case 404 — a missing article is normally reported via the API body (data.error / page.missing), so an HTTP-level failure usually indicates an infrastructure or filtering problem.

Source

Thrown at clis/wikipedia/page.js:63

        url.searchParams.set('prop', 'extracts|info|description');
        url.searchParams.set('inprop', 'url');
        url.searchParams.set('explaintext', '1');
        url.searchParams.set('redirects', '1');
        url.searchParams.set('titles', title);

        let resp;
        try {
            resp = await fetch(url, {
                headers: {
                    'User-Agent': 'opencli/1.0 (+https://github.com/jackwener/opencli)',
                    'Accept': 'application/json',
                },
            });
        } catch (error) {
            throw new CommandExecutionError(`wikipedia page request failed: ${error?.message || error}`);
        }
        if (!resp.ok) {
            throw new CommandExecutionError(`wikipedia page failed: HTTP ${resp.status}`);
        }
        let data;
        try {
            data = await resp.json();
        } catch (error) {
            throw new CommandExecutionError(`wikipedia returned malformed JSON: ${error?.message || error}`);
        }
        if (data?.error) {
            throw new CommandExecutionError(`wikipedia API error: ${data.error.info || data.error.code}`);
        }
        const pages = Array.isArray(data?.query?.pages) ? data.query.pages : [];
        const page = pages[0];
        if (!page || page.missing) {
            throw new EmptyResultError('wikipedia page', `No article "${title}" on ${lang}.wikipedia.org. Try \`opencli wikipedia search\` first.`);
        }
        const fullExtract = String(page.extract ?? '');
        if (!fullExtract.trim()) {
            throw new EmptyResultError('wikipedia page', `Article "${page.title}" exists but has no plain-text extract (likely a disambiguation/redirect page).`);

View on GitHub (pinned to 49907e53dc)

Solutions

1. Retry after a delay if the status is 429 or 5xx (transient)
2. Check the Wikimedia status page for incidents
3. Review request volume; add throttling/caching and a descriptive User-Agent
4. Test the same api.php URL in a browser/curl to see if the block is environment-specific

Example fix

// before
await Promise.all(titles.map(t => fetchPage(t))); // bursts trigger 429/403
// after
for (const t of titles) {
  await fetchPage(t);
  await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 300));
}

const fetchWithRetry = async (args, retries = 3) => {
  for (let i = 0; ; i++) {
    try { return await pageCommand(args); }
    catch (err) {
      const m = /HTTP (\d+)/.exec(String(err.message));
      const s = m && Number(m[1]);
      if ((!s || !(s === 429 || s >= 500)) || i >= retries) throw err;
      await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 1000 * 2 ** i));
    }
  }
};

When it happens

Trigger: Wikipedia edge returning 403 for blocked/proxy traffic or non-compliant User-Agent; 5xx during Wikimedia outages; 429 after hammering the API from one IP; requests blocked by a corporate firewall producing gateway error statuses.

Common situations: High-volume scraping from CI IPs hitting Wikimedia rate limits/abuse filters; Wikimedia maintenance windows; VPN/proxy exits flagged by Wikimedia.

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AI-assisted analysis of jackwener/OpenCLI@49907e53dc (2026-08-29). Data as JSON: /api/errors/0bad9110cd729d9e. Report an issue: GitHub.