The Medium RSS Feed’s Lacking Half | by Sabesan Sathananthan | Geek Tradition

retrieves the stats (clapCount, voterCount, responseCount, and readingTime) of Medium posts

On this article, I’ll clarify learn how to retrieve the stats ( claps depend, voter depend, response depend, and studying time) of Medium feed posts utilizing a REST API, the dearth of this function within the Medium RSS feed is what motivated me to create this superior Medium API. That is my forty first Medium article.

I wished to acquire the stats ( claps depend, voter depend, response depend, and studying time) of my Medium posts whereas engaged on my private web site growth. 2 years earlier than once I implement the medium widget to my web site I discovered Pixelpoint.io which generated a widget with clap counts of a medium submit. At that second I questioned how they carried out it? Then I overlook to analysis it however final month I discovered that pixelpoint.io’s widget is just not working. I seemed in all places for an answer to my wants however couldn’t discover one, so I had no alternative however to code it myself.

My preliminary instinct was to take a look at the RSS feed however there have been no such particulars are offered then I seemed on the official documentation of the general public REST API by Medium, and nothing was there both. The Medium REST API solely permits you to create a Medium article by HTTP POST technique(cf part 3.3). You possibly can’t retrieve or edit a Medium article through the use of the Medium API 😔.

With the intention to get an understanding of how the helpful stats are retrieved within the Medium submit, I began to examine the Medium utilizing browser developer instruments. Shockingly, there was no request to acquire the stats amongst all of the XHR calls, which push me to take a look at the HTML response of the Medium submit.

curl https://medium.com/p/unique_Id_of_the_post >> submit.html

As a javascript variable, the claps depend, voter depend, response depend, and studying time are instantly injected into the HTML response. You possibly can confirm that by typing console.log(window.__APOLLO_STATE__); within the Javascript console of the Submit web page.

Then I scrape these helpful stats utilizing request and cheerio .

In a medium submit, information comes as JSON in a script tag. Through the use of javascript, these information are picked up and rendered in DOM on the browser-side. Often, information in a script tag takes this kind:

You can in a position to make use of the Superior Medium API that I developed as follows:

There are 5 kinds of requests. you would be capable to get all of the responses through the use of HTTP GETtechnique.

Medium feed in JSON

You can in a position to get the RSS feed of the final 10 Medium posts through the use of the next hyperlinks (substitute your username as a substitute of @username ).

medium.com/feed/@username 
or 
username.medium.com/feed

The next request of the API provides the direct JSON conversion of that RSS Feed.

curl https://advanced-medium-api.herokuapp.com/medium/person/{userId}

Medium Superior Knowledge

You can in a position to get the Medium feed in JSON with the lacking a part of the Medium feed akin to clapCount, voterCount, responseCount, readingTime. every lacking information injected in each submit(gadgets) object.

The next request of the API provides the JSON conversion of the RSS feed with the injection of lacking information.

curl https://advanced-medium-api.herokuapp.com/superior/person/{userId}

Medium Personalized Knowledge

JSON conversion of the Medium RSS feed is personalized based on the classes. Order the Medium submit’s tags based on their use depend among the many newest 10 posts and the tagOrder return that tags’ order rank. Medium’s newest 10 posts had been divided by 3 and each 3 posts had been pushed in an array and people arrays had been pushed in a single array. There may be an algorithm that returns essentially the most appropriate tag for the Medium submit among the many different tags of that Medium submit.

The next request of the API provides the personalized model of the Medium feed in JSON

curl https://advanced-medium-api.herokuapp.com/personalized/person/{userId}

Medium Personalized Superior Knowledge

This response comprises the Medium personalized information with the injection of lacking stats akin to clapCount, voterCount, responseCount, readingTime.

The next request of the API provides the personalized model of the Medium feed in JSON with the lacking a part of the Medium feed.

curl https://advanced-medium-api.herokuapp.com/superior/personalized/person/{userId}

Lacking information of a specific submit.

This response comprises solely the lacking half (clapCount, voterCount, responseCount, readingTime) of Medium feed for a specific Medium submit.

Request 💻 ➡ 🌎 :

curl https://advanced-medium-api.herokuapp.com/medium/submit/{postId}

Response 🌎➡💻 :

{
"clapCount": 98,
"responseCount": 4,
"voterCount": 12,
"readingTime": 4
}

This API is Open Supply and I welcome your contributions. final 2 years I used the medium widget from Pixelpoint.io which generated a widget with clap counts of a medium submit. I didn’t do analysis to get the lacking a part of the Medium feed once I used Pixelpoint.io. however 2 months earlier than Pixelpoint.io is just not working and this incident impacts my private web site. Due to this fact I pushed myself and created this API.