The Philosophy Game

A Python module that allows you to play Wikipedia's "Getting to Philosophy" game.

Brief summary

Clicking on the first non-parenthesized, non-italicized link, in the main text of a Wikipedia article, and then repeating the process for subsequent articles, usually eventually gets one to the Philosophy article. (See this Wikipedia essay for more information)

The Philosophy Game, written in Python, lets you do the clicking programmatically.

How it works

The module does the following:

1. Parse the lead section of a Wikipedia page with given title as html, raise an appropriate error if an error occured while trying to do so (MediaWikiError, ConnectionError or InvalidPageNameError)
2. Look for internal links in the main text of the page, ignoring any infoboxes, tables, red links, italicised text, links within parentheses, or links to pages outside of the Wikipedia mainspace.
3. If any links are found, iterate over the links, and get the first link's page name.
4. If no links are found, parse the whole page again (not just the lead section this time)
5. Repeat steps 2-3. If no link is found this time, raise an appropriate error (LinkNotFoundError).
6. Repeat steps 1-5. If the end page is reached (default is "Philosophy; see Advanced options below), exit. If a loop is encountered (a loop is when two Wikipedia pages link to each other), raise an appropriate error (LoopException).

Basic usage

import philosophy
for s in philosophy.trace():
    print(s)

Handling errors

import philosophy
from philosophy.exceptions import *
my_first_wiki_page = 'Python (programming language)'
try:
    for s in philosophy.trace(my_first_wiki_page):
        print(s)
except ConnectionError:
	# raised when unable to connect to 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php'
    sys.exit('Network error, please check your connection')
except MediaWikiError as e:
	# raised when the MediaWiki API returns an error
    sys.exit('MediaWiki error {0}: {1}'.format(e.errors['code'], e.errors['info']))
except LoopException:
	# raised when a loop is detected
    sys.exit('Loop detected, exiting...')
except InvalidPageNameError as e:
	# raised when an invalid pagename is passed to trace()
    sys.exit(e)
except LinkNotFoundError as e:
	# raised when no valid link could be found in the article
    sys.exit(e)

Advanced options

In this example, we set end to 'Multicellular organism', so that instead of stopping at 'Philosophy', trace() stops there.

print(list(philosophy.trace(page='Sandwich', end='Multicellular organism')))

In the following example, we set infinite to True, so that trace() disregards the value of end and doesn't stop.

print(list(philosophy.trace(page='Sliced bread', infinite=True, end="Doesn't matter")))

Note that trace() will always raise exceptions in case a loop is detected or if a valid link cannot be found within the page.

Example script

I've included a simple ready-to-use example script that you can start using immediately without making your own.

Docker image

You can also use the Docker image to run the example script, if you prefer.

docker run --rm -it smtchahal/wikipedia-philosophy

Usage examples

Here's the simplest example.

$ ./example.py
Python (programming language)
General-purpose programming language
Computer software
Computer
Computer program
Instruction set
Computer architecture
Electronic engineering
Engineering
Mathematics
Quantity
Property (philosophy)
Modern philosophy
Philosophy
---
Took 13 link(s) and 33.8522 seconds

As you may see, the script starts at the Wikipedia page "Python (programming language)" and ends at "Philosophy".

Here's another version.

$ ./example.py Sandwich --end "Multicellular organism"
Sandwich
Vegetable
Fruit
Botany
Plant
Multicellular organism
---
Took 15 link(s) and 35.6163 seconds

In this example, we start with "Sandwich" and set the end parameter to "Multicellular organism", so we're telling the script to stop at "Multicellular organism" instead of "Philosophy". You can also use the -e option for setting the end parameter.

The following version only stops when loops are detected or when a valid link cannot be found, ignoring the value of the end parameter.

$ ./example.py --infinite --end "Doesn't matter"
Shpolskii matrix
Phonon
Physics
Natural science
Science
Knowledge
Awareness
Conscious
Quality (philosophy)
Philosophy
Reality
Existence
Ontology
---
Loop detected, quitting...
Visited 12 link(s), got a loop, taking 28.1101 seconds

You can always view help for the script using the --help (or -h) parameter.