Twitter API GET user_timeline reply/comment count

Question

Is there any way to get the comment/reply count for a tweet using GET statuses/user_timeline in addition to favorite_count and retweet_count which are already returned?

Thanks!

Answer 1

This feature had been requested since 2011 but there are no public API for reply counts so far, so it's not possible to directly get the reply count of a tweet.

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But there exists a workaround using the Search API:

You can do the query: q = "to:{author_screen_name}", sinceId = {tweet_id}, while author_screen_name is the screen name (like 'shiftpsh' in @shiftpsh) and tweet_id is id of the tweet you're trying to get the reply count.

Loop through all the tweets in the results and filter which in_reply_to_status_id_str is {tweet_id}.

Keep in mind that the Standard Search API has a search index limit of 7 days (30 days if premium) so the resulting reply count can be not accurate.

Answer 2

Twitter still doesn't have a sound solution for this.

Similar to shiftpsh's answer, with Node you can make a query to https://twitter.com/${screen_name}/status/${tweet_id} and use a module like JSDOM in JavaScript to parse the HTML into a DOM object. With that object, you can use normal document querying functions to pull out the reply count (and many other data points).

var repliesCount = parseInt(document.getElementsByClassName("permalink-tweet-container")[0]
    .getElementsByClassName("ProfileTweet-action--reply")[0]
  .getElementsByClassName("ProfileTweet-actionCount")[0]
  .getAttribute("data-tweet-stat-count"));

This solution is a form of web scraping, so please be responsible when employing these types of solutions.

EDIT: Just noticed your tags are for Java, jsoup is a great library for parsing HTML to an object and traversing it with jQuery like methods.

Answer 3

Just thought I'd update this answer for anyone who's facing the issue. Twitter's API now includes "metrics" endpoint where you can get this information.

Following the documentation:

"GET /tweets/metrics/private supports the ability to retrieve Tweet engagement data and delivers the following metrics:

• impressions
• Retweets
• Quote Tweets
• likes
• replies
• video views
• video view quartiles "

The caveat, however, is that it only applies to owned or authorised accounts and tweets posted in the previous 30 days (before the request)