Crawl4Weibo

中文文档 | English

Crawl4Weibo is a ready-to-use Weibo (微博) web scraper Python library that simulates mobile requests, handles common anti-scraping strategies, and returns structured data models—ideal for data collection, analysis, and monitoring scenarios.

✨ Features

• No Cookie Required: Runs without cookies, automatically initializes session with mobile User-Agent
• Browser-Based Cookie Fetching: Uses Playwright to simulate real browsers for enhanced anti-scraping bypass
• Optional Logged-In Cookies: Interactive login and persisted storage state for more complete data
• Built-in 432 Protection: Handles anti-scraping protection with exponential backoff retry mechanism
• Unified Proxy Pool Management: Supports both dynamic and static IP proxy pools with configurable TTL, polling strategies, and automatic cleanup
• Standardized Data Models: Clean User, Post, and Comment data models with recursive access to reposted content
• Long Text Expansion: Supports expanding truncated long posts, keyword search, user list fetching, and batch pagination
• Comment Scraping: Fetch post comments with automatic pagination and support for nested replies
• Image Download Utilities: Download images from single posts, batches, or entire pages with duplicate file detection
• Unified Logging & Error Types: Quickly locate network, parsing, or authentication issues

Installation

pip install crawl4weibo

Or use the faster uv:

uv pip install crawl4weibo

⚠️ Important: Install Browser Kernel (Recommended for Default Usage)

Due to Weibo's strengthened anti-scraping measures, the program uses Playwright browser automation by default to fetch cookies and bypass anti-scraping. The Playwright library will be installed automatically with crawl4weibo, but you need to manually install the browser kernel:

# Install Chromium browser kernel (Recommended!)
playwright install chromium

# Or using uv:
uv run playwright install chromium

Quick Start

from crawl4weibo import WeiboClient

client = WeiboClient()
uid = "2656274875"

# Get user information
user = client.get_user_by_uid(uid)
print(f"{user.screen_name} - Followers: {user.followers_count}")

# Get user posts (with long text expansion)
posts = client.get_user_posts(uid, page=1, expand=True)
for post in posts[:3]:
    print(f"{post.text[:50]}... - Likes: {post.attitudes_count}")

# Search users (filters are applied locally based on available fields)
users = client.search_users("新浪", gender="f", location="北京")
for user in users[:3]:
    print(f"{user.screen_name} - Followers: {user.followers_count}")

# Search posts
results = client.search_posts("人工智能", page=1)
print(f"Found {len(results)} results")

# Get post comments
if results:
    post_id = results[0].id
    comments, pagination = client.get_comments(post_id, page=1)
    print(f"Retrieved {len(comments)} comments")
    print(f"Total comments: {pagination['total_number']}")

    # Get all comments with automatic pagination
    all_comments = client.get_all_comments(post_id, max_pages=3)
    for comment in all_comments[:3]:
        print(f"{comment.user_screen_name}: {comment.text[:50]}...")

For more examples, see examples/simple_example.py.

Logged-In Cookies (Optional)

Some endpoints return more complete data when using logged-in cookies. You can enable interactive login and persist the browser storage state for reuse:

from crawl4weibo import WeiboClient

client = WeiboClient(
    login_cookies=True,
    cookie_storage_path="~/.crawl4weibo/weibo_storage_state.json",
    browser_headless=False,
    login_timeout=180,
)

Notes:

• The first run opens a browser window for manual login. Subsequent runs can reuse the saved storage state.
• After the first login, you can set browser_headless=True to run without UI.
• If cookie_storage_path is omitted, it defaults to ~/.crawl4weibo/weibo_storage_state.json when login_cookies=True.
• Keep the storage file secure; it contains authenticated session data.

Run the example:

# Clone the repository first
python examples/simple_example.py

# Or using uv
uv run python examples/simple_example.py

Image Download Example

from crawl4weibo import WeiboClient

client = WeiboClient()

# Method 1: Download images from a single post
post = client.get_post_by_bid("Q6FyDtbQc")
if post.pic_urls:
    results = client.download_post_images(
        post,
        download_dir="./downloads",
        subdir="single_post"
    )
    print(f"Successfully downloaded {sum(1 for p in results.values() if p)} images")

# Method 2: Batch download images from user posts
posts = client.get_user_posts("2656274875", page=1)
results = client.download_posts_images(
    posts[:3],  # Download images from first 3 posts
    download_dir="./downloads"
)

# Method 3: Download images from multiple pages of user posts
results = client.download_user_posts_images(
    uid="2656274875",
    pages=2,  # Download from first 2 pages
    download_dir="./downloads"
)

For more usage details, see examples/download_images_example.py.

Run the example:

python examples/download_images_example.py

Proxy Pool Configuration Example

from crawl4weibo import WeiboClient, ProxyPoolConfig

# Method 1: Use dynamic proxy API (pooling mode - default)
proxy_config = ProxyPoolConfig(
    proxy_api_url="http://api.proxy.com/get?format=json",
    dynamic_proxy_ttl=300,      # Dynamic proxy TTL in seconds
    pool_size=10,               # Proxy pool capacity
    fetch_strategy="random"     # random or round_robin
)
client = WeiboClient(proxy_config=proxy_config)

# Method 2: One-time proxy mode (for single-use IP providers)
proxy_config = ProxyPoolConfig(
    proxy_api_url="http://api.proxy.com/get",
    use_once_proxy=True,
)
client = WeiboClient(proxy_config=proxy_config)
# Efficient: Uses all returned IPs before fetching new batch

# Method 3: Manually add static proxies
client = WeiboClient()
client.add_proxy("http://1.2.3.4:8080", ttl=600)  # With TTL
client.add_proxy("http://5.6.7.8:8080")  # Never expires

# Method 4: Mix dynamic and static proxies
proxy_config = ProxyPoolConfig(
    proxy_api_url="http://api.proxy.com/get",
    pool_size=20
)
client = WeiboClient(proxy_config=proxy_config)
client.add_proxy("http://1.2.3.4:8080", ttl=None)

# Method 5: Custom parser (adapt to different proxy providers)
def custom_parser(data):
    return [f"http://{data['result']['ip']}:{data['result']['port']}"]

proxy_config = ProxyPoolConfig(
    proxy_api_url="http://custom-api.com/proxy",
    proxy_api_parser=custom_parser
)
client = WeiboClient(proxy_config=proxy_config)

# Flexible control of proxy usage per request
user = client.get_user_by_uid("2656274875", use_proxy=False)
posts = client.get_user_posts("2656274875", page=1)  # Uses proxy

API Overview

• get_user_by_uid(uid): Get user profile and statistics
• get_user_posts(uid, page=1, expand=False): Fetch user timeline posts with optional long text expansion
• get_post_by_bid(bid): Get full content and media info for a single post
• get_comments(post_id, page=1): Get comments for a specific post (returns comments list and pagination info)
• get_all_comments(post_id, max_pages=None): Get all comments with automatic pagination
• search_users(query, page=1, count=10, *, gender=None, location=None, birthday=None, age_range=None, education=None, company=None) / search_posts(query, page=1): Keyword search (user filters are applied locally)
• download_post_images(post, ...), download_user_posts_images(uid, pages=2, ...): Download image assets
• Unified Exceptions: NetworkError, RateLimitError, UserNotFoundError, etc., for business-level error handling

CLI

uv run crawl4weibo-cli get-user --uid 2656274875
uv run crawl4weibo-cli search-users --query "Lei Jun" --count 5
uv run crawl4weibo-cli search-posts --query "新能源" --page 1

The CLI prints JSON by default and supports --detail compact|full, cookie flags, comment expansion, and proxy disabling.

For OpenClaw usage, see skills/crawl4weibo/SKILL.md.

MCP Server (for agents)

MCP setup details moved to dedicated docs:

• docs/MCP.md (English)
• docs/MCP_zh.md (中文)

These docs include requirements, installation, startup, tool list, response detail levels, and Codex/Claude configuration examples.

Development & Testing

uv sync --dev                # Install dev dependencies
uv run pytest                # Run all tests (includes unit/integration/slow markers)
uv run ruff check crawl4weibo --fix
uv run ruff format crawl4weibo
uv run python examples/simple_example.py

For project structure, contribution guidelines, and more workflows, see docs/DEVELOPMENT.md and AGENTS.md.

License

MIT License