Weibo Spider is a web scraper that extracts data from Sina Weibo user accounts and stores the results in files or databases.
The tool solves the problem of collecting historical posts and user information from Sina Weibo accounts at scale. It works by authenticating with cookie credentials to access Weibo's servers, then systematically crawling one or multiple user profiles to retrieve comprehensive datasets. The scraper captures two main categories of data: user profile information and individual post metadata. Results can be written to multiple storage formats including text files, CSV, JSON, MySQL, MongoDB, and SQLite databases. The tool also supports downloading media assets embedded in posts, including original images from both native and reposted content, as well as video files from posts and Live Photo features.
Developers should choose this tool if they need authenticated access to Weibo data for research or analysis purposes. It suits projects requiring bulk historical data collection from specific user accounts rather than real-time streaming. The README mentions a cookie-free alternative version with similar functionality but notes that the cookie-based approach in this repository provides access to additional features. The tool requires manual cookie configuration to function, which adds a setup step compared to unauthenticated approaches.
The project is marked as seeking help, indicating active maintenance needs and openness to community contributions.
