Using MediaWiki API with the Continue Command - php

Question

I need some help Using the Mediawiki API with the "Continue" or "query-continue" Command to pull information from my wiki articles. I have a large number of wiki articles (more than 800 currently) and I need to use the api to pull them in batches of 50 and then print ou sections.
My API call works properly:
//Stackoverflow making me use a valid URL here, this api is actually my own localhost server
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=allpages&apfrom=a&apto=z&apnamespace=0&format=xml&aplimit=50 I am querying all pages, therefore "apfrom" and "apto".
I just need help processing the code with PHP and CURL accessing the API and processing the batches of 50 and using the "continue" to access more records until I hit the end. So far my php code is:
//the CURL commands here work and outputs a data set but only for the first 50 records, so I need to call "continue" to get to the end.
//My api url is localhost but I'm forced to use a valid URL by Stackoverflow.com
$url = sprintf('http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?
action=query&list=allpages&apfrom=a&apto=z&apnamespace=0&format=xml&aplimit=50');
$ch=curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'My site');
$res = curl_exec($ch);
$continue = '';
while ( // I don't know what to set here as true to get the while loop going, maybe continue = true? maybe set query-continue as true?)
{
//Maybe I need something other than $res['query-continue]??
if (empty($res['query-continue']))
{
exit;
}
else
{
$continue = '&apcontinue='.urlencode($res['query-continue']);
foreach ($res['query']['allpages'] as $v)
{
echo $v['title'];
}
}
}
Can someone correct my while loop code above so I can do a simple print out of the title from each wiki article in the loop? I've done a lot of searching online but I'm stuck!! I found a python loop example at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Query but I have to do it in PHP. And I am not sure if I call continue or query-continue.

Answer 1

As svick said, please use a client library which handles continuation for you.
The query continuation mechanism has changed multiple times in MediaWiki, you don't want to understand it or even less rely on it.