Linking Wikipedia Pageviews as a source

Alpha release

This source is currently in alpha. The interface and available tables may change.

The Wikipedia Pageviews connector syncs pageview statistics for any Wikimedia project (Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons, and more) from the public Wikimedia Analytics API. It imports project-wide daily totals, daily counts for specific articles, and each day's most-viewed articles.

Prerequisites

None. The Wikimedia Analytics API is public and requires no credentials. Pageview data is available from July 2015 onward and lands with a delay of about a day.

Adding a data source

In PostHog, go to the Sources tab of the data pipeline section.
Click + New source and click Link next to this source.
Enter your credentials (see Configuration below) and click Next.
Select the tables you want to sync, choose a sync method and frequency, then click Import.

Once the syncs are complete, you can start querying this data in PostHog.

Configure the source with:

Project domain: the Wikimedia project to sync, such as en.wikipedia.org, de.wikipedia.org, or commons.wikimedia.org.
Access method and agent type: which slice of traffic to count. The defaults (all access methods, human traffic) match the numbers shown on Wikipedia's public pageview tools.
Article titles (optional): a comma-separated list of article titles to track in the article_pageviews table, for example Albert Einstein, Marie Curie.
Start date (optional): the earliest day to sync, in YYYY-MM-DD format. Defaults to 2015-07-01, when Wikimedia pageview data begins.

Sync modes

Each table can be synced in one of several modes, depending on what the source supports:

Webhook (when available) – the source pushes changes to PostHog in real time. Fastest freshness, lowest ongoing cost, and the only mode that reliably captures updates and deletes.
Incremental – only new or updated rows are synced on each run, using a cursor field (such as an updated_at timestamp). Cheaper than a full refresh, but deletes aren't captured.
Append only – new rows are appended using a cursor field; existing rows are never updated. Ideal for immutable, append-only tables like event logs.
Full refresh – the whole table is reloaded on every sync. Use it when a table has no reliable cursor or when you need deletions reflected.

See sync methods for a full explanation of how each mode works and how to choose between them.

All tables support incremental syncs on the date column, which only fetch days newer than the last synced day on each run. This is the recommended sync method.

Configuration

Option	Description
`Project domain` Type: text Required: True
`Access method` Type: select Required: True
`Agent type` Type: select Required: True
`Article titles` Type: text Required: False	Comma-separated list of article titles for the article_pageviews table.
`Start date` Type: text Required: False	Earliest day to sync (YYYY-MM-DD). Defaults to 2015-07-01, when Wikimedia pageview data begins.

Supported tables

Table	Description	Sync method	Incremental field	Primary key
`pageviews`	Daily total pageviews for the whole project	Incremental, Full refresh	date	—
`article_pageviews`	Daily pageviews per configured article title	Incremental, Full refresh	date	—
`top_articles`	The 1000 most-viewed articles per day	Incremental, Full refresh	date	—

Troubleshooting

"No pageview data found for project": check the project domain. It should be a Wikimedia project domain like en.wikipedia.org, not an article URL.
The article_pageviews table fails to sync: add one or more article titles in the source settings. The table only syncs the articles you list.
The latest day is missing: Wikimedia publishes pageview data with a delay of about a day. The most recent day arrives on the next sync after it's published.

If your sync is failing or data looks wrong, see the Data warehouse troubleshooting guide. If that doesn't help, contact support – we're happy to help.