Get the share counts from various APIs

gistfile1.md

Share Counts

I have always struggled with getting all the various share buttons from Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, etc to align correctly and to not look like a tacky explosion of buttons. Seeing a number of sites rolling their own share buttons with counts, for example The Next Web I decided to look into the various APIs on how to simply return the share count.

If you want to roll up all of these into a single jQuery plugin check out Sharrre

Many of these API calls and methods are undocumented, so anticipate that they will change in the future. Also, if you are planning on rolling these out across a site I would recommend creating a simple endpoint that periodically caches results from all of the APIs so that you are not overloading the services will requests.

Twitter

GET URL:

http://cdn.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=http://stylehatch.co

Returns:

{
	"count":528,
	"url":"http://stylehatch.co/"
}

Facebook

GET URL:

http://graph.facebook.com/?id=http://stylehatch.co

Returns:

{
   "id": "http://stylehatch.co",
   "shares": 61
}

Pinterest

GET URL:

http://api.pinterest.com/v1/urls/count.json?callback=&url=http://stylehatch.co

Result:

({"count": 0, "url": "http://stylehatch.co"})

LinkedIn

GET URL:

http://www.linkedin.com/countserv/count/share?url=http://stylehatch.co&format=json

Returns:

{
	"count":17,
	"fCnt":"17",
	"fCntPlusOne":"18",
	"url":"http:\/\/stylehatch.co"
}

Google Plus

POST URL:

https://clients6.google.com/rpc?key=YOUR_API_KEY

POST body:

[{
	"method":"pos.plusones.get",
	"id":"p",
	"params":{
		"nolog":true,
		"id":"http://stylehatch.co/",
		"source":"widget",
		"userId":"@viewer",
		"groupId":"@self"
		},
	"jsonrpc":"2.0",
	"key":"p",
	"apiVersion":"v1"
}]

Returns

[{
	"result": { 
		"kind": "pos#plusones", 
		"id": "http://stylehatch.co/", 
		"isSetByViewer": false, 
		"metadata": {
			"type": "URL", 
			"globalCounts": {
				"count": 3097.0
			}
		}
	} ,
	"id": "p"
}]

StumbledUpon

GET URL:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/services/1.01/badge.getinfo?url=http://stylehatch.co

Result:

{
	"result":{
		"url":"http:\/\/stylehatch.co\/",
		"in_index":true,
		"publicid":"1iOLcK",
		"views":39,
		"title":"Style Hatch - Hand Crafted Digital Goods",
		"thumbnail":"http:\/\/cdn.stumble-upon.com\/mthumb\/941\/72725941.jpg",
		"thumbnail_b":"http:\/\/cdn.stumble-upon.com\/bthumb\/941\/72725941.jpg",
		"submit_link":"http:\/\/www.stumbleupon.com\/submit\/?url=http:\/\/stylehatch.co\/",
		"badge_link":"http:\/\/www.stumbleupon.com\/badge\/?url=http:\/\/stylehatch.co\/",
		"info_link":"http:\/\/www.stumbleupon.com\/url\/stylehatch.co\/"
	},
	"timestamp":1336520555,
	"success":true
}

Here is another gem built for this purpose. It was constructed several years ago but has recently been updated to remove stale API endpoints and add new ones. https://github.com/mindtonic/virility

+1 @kenbrew

+1 @mindtonic, how can we use it in PHP?

Twitter is broken.

Cool3!!

Anyone know of a Facebook (fql) alternative? Point me in the right direction

the FB share counts and the subscriber count is not working anymore. does anyone know an alternative for it

@timdmaxey & @shavini. When you get the data via the Graph API, for example http://graph.facebook.com/?id=http://google.com it returns an object.
To get the share count, you need to return $data->share->share_count;.

anyone here knows share count for the ff:

twitter
google
weibo
pinit
tublr
hatena

Thanks.

Thanks OP for the effort. These are handful resource.
To reply some queries posed some some readers, twitter count is never complete nowadays. Twitter doesnt provide total share count, so even those third party share counters who claim to keep the record of tweets of their own also can only track partially (because they too need to scrape data using twitter incomplete api)

There is one social signal counter I found most complete is by shareyt.com called SocialCounter.
They show 30 different share counts and they are pretty accurate. Although they dont offer api support.
http://shareyt.com/SocialCounter.php
Here is the link if it helps.

The one for pinterest seem to have changed.

Previously:
http://api.pinterest.com/v1/urls/count.json?callback=&url=http://example.com

Now:
http://api.pinterest.com/v1/urls/count.json?callback=receiveCount&url=http://example.com

You now have to add the specific callback 'receiveCount' for it to work.

Very helpful, Thanks.

for facebook. i use

javascript

`var token = 'APP ID|APP SECRET';
url = 'url of your';

  $.ajax({
  url: 'https://graph.facebook.com/v2.7/',
  dataType: 'jsonp',
  type: 'GET',
  data: {access_token: token, id: url},
  success: function(data){
    console.log(data);
    $('body').append(data.share.share_count);
  },
  error: function(data){
    console.log(data); // send the error notifications to console
  }
  });`

It's wok!!
credit: rudrastyh

Google+ no longer works
https://plus.google.com/110610523830483756510/posts/Z1FfzduveUo

@paokodo ya but you are exposing your APP ID and SECRET in the process.

hi guys me, im using this

https://graph.facebook.com/?id=http://google.com

Its working,

but how can i post it

in this way

public function getFacebookData($domain)
		{
			try
			{
				$callback_url = "https://graph.facebook.com/?";
				$data = array(
					'id'	=> "SELECT comment_count, like_count, share_count FROM link_stat WHERE url='http://.$domain'"
				);

				$curl_response = $this->curl->get($callback_url . http_build_query($data, '', '&'));

				if ($curl_response->headers['Status-Code'] == "200") {

					$parse_response = json_decode($curl_response, true);
					$fb_share_count = $parse_response['data'][0]['share_count'];
					$fb_like_count = $parse_response['data'][0]['like_count'];
					$fb_comment_count = $parse_response['data'][0]['comment_count'];

				} else {
					$fb_share_count = 0;
					$fb_like_count = 0;
					$fb_comment_count = 0;
				}

				$response = array(
					'status' => 'success',
					'data' => array(
						'fb_share_count' => filter_var($fb_share_count, FILTER_SANITIZE_NUMBER_INT),
						'fb_like_count' => filter_var($fb_like_count, FILTER_SANITIZE_NUMBER_INT),
						'fb_comment_count' => filter_var($fb_comment_count, FILTER_SANITIZE_NUMBER_INT)
					)
				);

			}
			catch (Exception $e)
			{
				$response = array(
					'status' => 'error',
					'msg' => $e->getMessage()
				);
			}
			return $response;
		}

Any suggestion

the issue is if i dont put http://

they will be an error

twitter api not work

New api:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35146281/twitter-get-number-of-shares-using-the-new-api

It seems that LinkedIn either has stopped working or has some issues. It keeps returning a count of 0, even for URLs which got a non-zero count until yesterday.

I’m seeing the same problem with LinkedIn but no feedback from them or anywhere else except this thread...

Claims here the Count call is shuttered following its removal from the inShare plugin:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48282250/linkedin-share-count-api-countserv-count-share-always-returns-0

Is this section complete?

is there any api for whatsapp total count ??

@frollo The linkedin is deprecated and no long provide us any shrare.

Does any one know how to get the count from linkedin?

Sorry for this noob question, but is it necessary to provide an appId in order to get the count of shares of specified url?

Sorry for this noob question, but is it necessary to provide an appId in order to get the count of shares of specified url?

For facebook api, it is not required

@frollo The linkedin is deprecated and no long provide us any shrare.

Does any one know how to get the count from linkedin?

Shall we scrap?

is there any api for whatsapp total count ??

Whatsapp messages are encrypted and hence not possible