tw_search: Search for Wikidata items or properties and return Wikidata...

In tidywikidatar: Explore 'Wikidata' Through Tidy Data Frames

Search for Wikidata items or properties and return Wikidata id, label, and description.

Description

By defaults, this search returns items. Set type to property or use tw_search_property() for properties.

Usage

tw_search(
  search,
  type = "item",
  language = tidywikidatar::tw_get_language(),
  response_language = tidywikidatar::tw_get_language(),
  limit = 10,
  include_search = FALSE,
  wait = 0,
  user_agent = tidywikidatar::tw_get_user_agent(),
  cache = NULL,
  overwrite_cache = FALSE,
  cache_connection = NULL,
  disconnect_db = TRUE
)

Arguments

search	A string to be searched in Wikidata
type	Defaults to "item". Either "item" or "property".
language	Language to be used for the search. Can be set once per session with tw_set_language(). If not set, defaults to "en". For a full list, see the dedicated Wikimedia page.
response_language	Language to be used for the returned labels and descriptions. Corresponds to the uselang parameter of the MediaWiki API, as described in the official documentation. Can be set once per session with tw_set_language(). If not set, defaults to "en". For a full list, see all available language codes.
limit	Maximum numbers of responses to be given.
include_search	Logical, defaults to FALSE. If TRUE, the search is returned as an additional column.
wait	In seconds, defaults to 0. Time to wait between queries to Wikidata. If data are cached locally, wait time is not applied. If you are running many queries systematically you may want to add some waiting time between queries.
user_agent	Defaults to NULL. If not given, implicitly defaults to current package name (tidywikidatar) and version.
cache	Defaults to NULL. If given, it should be given either TRUE or FALSE. Typically set with tw_enable_cache() or tw_disable_cache().
overwrite_cache	Defaults to FALSE. If TRUE, overwrites cache.
cache_connection	Defaults to NULL. If NULL, and caching is enabled, tidywikidatar will use a local sqlite database. A custom connection to other databases can be given (see vignette caching for details).
disconnect_db	Defaults to TRUE. If FALSE, leaves the connection to cache open.

Value

A data frame (a tibble) with three columns (id, label, and description), and as many rows as there are results (by default, limited to 10). Four columns when include_search is set to TRUE.

Examples

tw_search(search = c("Margaret Mead", "Ruth Benedict"))

tidywikidatar documentation built on Feb. 10, 2026, 1:07 a.m.