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wikitaxa

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Velocity0.0

taxonomy data from Wikipedia/Wikidata/Wikispecies. Contribute to ropensci/wikitaxa development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com/ropensci/wikitaxa ↗

A six-year silence broken by a dependency that CRAN deleted underneath it

taxonomywikidataropenscimaintenancedependency-removal
◆Current state
wikitaxa is the rOpenSci client for pulling taxonomic records out of Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikispecies and Wikicommons, and it has been feature-complete since 2017. The v0.5.0 release in February 2026 arrived after nearly six years of silence, and it exists because CRAN archived WikidataR — the library wikitaxa used to reach Wikidata. The fix routes those calls through WikipediR directly, which removes a third-party single point of failure from the package's dependency graph.
◆Where it's heading
Every release in this window is repair, not expansion: parser fixes for Wikicommons classification pages, common-name handling in the Wikispecies parser, and the Wikidata backend swap. The one functional addition across six entries is the `wiki` language parameter in v0.1.4. This is a package in maintenance-on-demand mode, where the trigger for a release is an upstream break rather than a roadmap.
◆Prediction
Expect the next release to be reactive again — another upstream parser break or a CRAN policy notice — rather than new endpoints. Nothing in these entries indicates planned feature work.

◆Recent moves

  1. 6mo ago

    Wikidata calls rerouted after CRAN archives WikidataR

    Drops the archived WikidataR dependency and calls WikipediR directly, which is what makes wt_data() work again after CRAN removed the intermediary. Two parser bugs are fixed alongside it — common names in wt_wikispecies_parse and taxa handling in wt_data. The first release in almost six years, and entirely a survival move.

    View source ↗
  2. 6y ago

    Docs cleanup and vignette rename

    Documentation housekeeping only — an unused httr link removed and a vignette renamed. No behaviour change for anyone calling the package.

    View source ↗
  3. 7y ago

    HTTP request caching added to the test suite

    Test-suite infrastructure — all HTTP requests are now cached through vcr — plus a small `<br>` parsing fix in wt_wikipedia(). The vcr work matters to contributors, not to users of the package.

    View source ↗
  4. 8y ago

    Wikicommons classification parsing and error handling repaired

    Repairs wt_wikicommons() on two fronts: it now fails cleanly on missing pages instead of erroring inconsistently with the rest of the package, and its classification parsing was rewritten against Wikicommons' irregular markup. wt_data() is also fixed after an upstream WikidataR change — the same class of breakage that eventually forces the v0.5.0 rewrite.

    View source ↗
  5. 9y ago

    Wikipedia queries gain a language parameter

    Adds a `wiki` parameter to wt_wikipedia() and wt_wikipedia_search() so callers can target a non-English Wikipedia, defaulting to `en`. It is the only genuinely new capability in the package's visible history here.

    View source ↗
  6. 9y ago

    First CRAN release

    The initial CRAN release. The entry carries no detail beyond the fact of publication, so the shape of the package at launch has to be read from the fixes that follow it.

    View source ↗