Parsing a Wikipedia dump

It looks like you really want to be able to parse MediaWiki markup. There is a python library designed for this purpose called mwlib. You can use python's built-in XML packages to extract the page content from the API's response, then pass that content into mwlib's parser to produce an object representation that you can browse and analyse in code to extract the information you want. mwlib is BSD licensed.

I described how to do this using a combination of pywikibot and mwparserfromhell in this post (don't have enough reputation yet to flag as a duplicate).

In [1]: import mwparserfromhell

In [2]: import pywikibot

In [3]: enwp = pywikibot.Site('en','wikipedia')

In [4]: page = pywikibot.Page(enwp, 'Waking Life')            

In [5]: wikitext = page.get()               

In [6]: wikicode = mwparserfromhell.parse(wikitext)

In [7]: templates = wikicode.filter_templates()

In [8]: templates?
Type:       list
String Form:[u'{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2012}}', u"{{Infobox film\n| name           = Waking Life\n| im <...> critic film|waking-life|Waking Life}}', u'{{Richard Linklater}}', u'{{DEFAULTSORT:Waking Life}}']
Length:     31
Docstring:
list() -> new empty list
list(iterable) -> new list initialized from iterable's items

In [10]: templates[:2]
Out[10]: 
[u'{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2012}}',
 u"{{Infobox film\n| name           = Waking Life\n| image          = Waking-Life-Poster.jpg\n| image_size     = 220px\n| alt            =\n| caption        = Theatrical release poster\n| director       = [[Richard Linklater]]\n| producer       = [[Tommy Pallotta]]<br />[[Jonah Smith]]<br />Anne Walker-McBay<br />Palmer West\n| writer         = Richard Linklater\n| starring       = [[Wiley Wiggins]]\n| music          = Glover Gill\n| cinematography = Richard Linklater<br />[[Tommy Pallotta]]\n| editing        = Sandra Adair\n| studio         = [[Thousand Words]]\n| distributor    = [[Fox Searchlight Pictures]]\n| released       = {{Film date|2001|01|23|[[Sundance Film Festival|Sundance]]|2001|10|19|United States}}\n| runtime        = 101 minutes<!--Theatrical runtime: 100:40--><ref>{{cite web |title=''WAKING LIFE'' (15) |url=http://www.bbfc.co.uk/releases/waking-life-2002-3|work=[[British Board of Film Classification]]|date=September 19, 2001|accessdate=May 6, 2013}}</ref>\n| country        = United States\n| language       = English\n| budget         =\n| gross          = $3,176,880<ref>{{cite web|title=''Waking Life'' (2001)|work=[[Box Office Mojo]] |url=http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=wakinglife.htm|accessdate=March 20, 2010}}</ref>\n}}"]

In [11]: infobox_film = templates[1]

In [12]: for param in infobox_film.params:
             print param.name, param.value

 name             Waking Life

 image            Waking-Life-Poster.jpg

 image_size       220px

 alt             

 caption          Theatrical release poster

 director         [[Richard Linklater]]

 producer         [[Tommy Pallotta]]<br />[[Jonah Smith]]<br />Anne Walker-McBay<br />Palmer West

 writer           Richard Linklater

 starring         [[Wiley Wiggins]]

 music            Glover Gill

 cinematography   Richard Linklater<br />[[Tommy Pallotta]]

 editing          Sandra Adair

 studio           [[Thousand Words]]

 distributor      [[Fox Searchlight Pictures]]

 released         {{Film date|2001|01|23|[[Sundance Film Festival|Sundance]]|2001|10|19|United States}}

 runtime          101 minutes<!--Theatrical runtime: 100:40--><ref>{{cite web |title=''WAKING LIFE'' (15) |url=http://www.bbfc.co.uk/releases/waking-life-2002-3|work=[[British Board of Film Classification]]|date=September 19, 2001|accessdate=May 6, 2013}}</ref>

 country          United States

 language         English

 budget          

 gross            $3,176,880<ref>{{cite web|title=''Waking Life'' (2001)|work=[[Box Office Mojo]] |url=http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=wakinglife.htm|accessdate=March 20, 2010}}</ref>

Don't forget that params are mwparserfromhell objects too!