Read public Weibo accounts, posts, comments, search results and the hot-search list as structured JSON
Weibo is China's largest public microblog. These endpoints return accounts, posts, comments, replies, keyword search and the live hot-search list (热搜) in the same Author, Post and Comment shapes as every other platform, with the province or country each post and comment came from.
Base URL: /v1/weibo/...
Weibo exposes 8 routes here. Account routes take exactly one of handle, id or url, and post routes take a Weibo post link.
Search is not a census. /v1/weibo/search returns the posts Weibo's own search shows for a term, so a search can miss posts that exist. Chinese terms match far more posts than English ones, so search in Chinese for Chinese topics.
Quickstart
Look up an account
Use the account's numeric id, its custom handle, or a profile url. This returns exact follower, following and post counts.
curl "https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/weibo/profile?id=2803301701" \
-H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"List its posts
Posts come newest first, up to 50 a page. Pass the returned cursor for older posts, back through roughly the newest 2,000.
curl "https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/weibo/profile/posts?id=2803301701&limit=50" \
-H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"Read the comments on a post
Sort by hot (most liked first) or latest. Each comment carries the province it was posted from in comment.ext.ip_location.
curl "https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/weibo/post/comments?url=https://weibo.com/2803301701/Rq0Gp5523&sort=hot" \
-H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"Search a topic over time
search reads a keyword or a #topic#, newest first. since and until read a fixed period, back for years, and the tab parameter switches between latest, all, original, verified, top, hot, videos, media and images. The latest, all, original and verified tabs continue with the returned cursor. top, hot and videos are ranked and give one page per time window. media and images give one page and take no time window.
curl "https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/weibo/search?query=%E5%8D%8E%E4%B8%BA&tab=latest&since=2024-01-01&until=2024-01-31" \
-H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"All endpoints
8 endpoints available.
| Endpoint | Path | Credit Tier |
|---|---|---|
| Get a Weibo post | /v1/weibo/post | standard (1cr) |
| Get a Weibo account | /v1/weibo/profile | standard (1cr) |
| List the replies to a Weibo comment | /v1/weibo/comment/replies | advanced (5cr) |
| List the comments on a Weibo post | /v1/weibo/post/comments | advanced (5cr) |
| List a Weibo account's posts | /v1/weibo/profile/posts | advanced (5cr) |
| Search Weibo posts, back through time | /v1/weibo/search | advanced (5cr) |
| Search Weibo accounts | /v1/weibo/search/users | advanced (5cr) |
| Get the Weibo hot-search list | /v1/weibo/trending | advanced (5cr) |
Platform notes
Long posts are shortened in lists. Post lists and search flag a shortened post with post.ext.text_truncated. GET /v1/weibo/post returns the full text and the read count.
Follower counts are rounded in account search. author.followers is null on GET /v1/weibo/search/users. Call GET /v1/weibo/profile for the exact figure.
Very large comment threads stop at a few hundred comments. That is Weibo's own limit. GET /v1/weibo/comment/replies reads the replies under one comment, using the comment.id from the comments route.
Dates and time zones. A date passed to since or until is read as that day in China time. An ISO 8601 date-time is read as given.