book.douban.com APIbook.douban.com ↗
Access Douban Books data via 9 endpoints: book search, metadata, ratings, long reviews, short comments, Top 250, tag browsing, and monthly charts.
curl -X GET 'https://api.parse.bot/scraper/25fc1543-1fce-4d05-a285-00e4d45dad81/get_books_by_tag?tag=%E5%B0%8F%E8%AF%B4&sort=T&start=0' \ -H 'X-API-Key: $PARSE_API_KEY'
Fetch a paginated list of books for a given tag. Returns books with title, rating, publication info, and reader count.
| Param | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| tagrequired | string | Tag name to browse (e.g., '小说', '文学', '历史'). |
| sort | string | Sort order. Accepted values: 'T' (popular), 'R' (recent), 'S' (top rated). |
| start | integer | Pagination offset (number of items to skip). |
{
"type": "object",
"fields": {
"tag": "string, the tag name queried",
"books": "array of book objects with keys: title, url, id, image, pub, rating, count, desc",
"start": "integer, pagination offset used"
},
"sample": {
"data": {
"tag": "小说",
"books": [
{
"id": "37833272",
"pub": "刘震云 / 人民文学出版社 / 2025-12",
"url": "https://book.douban.com/subject/37833272/",
"desc": "《咸的玩笑》延续了刘震云“写众生”的创作底色...",
"count": "12695",
"image": "https://img3.doubanio.com/view/subject/s/public/s35334352.jpg",
"title": "咸的玩笑",
"rating": "8.5"
}
],
"start": 0
},
"status": "success"
}
}About the book.douban.com API
The Douban Books API provides 9 endpoints covering book search, detailed metadata, user reviews, short comments, curated charts, and tag-based browsing from book.douban.com. The get_book_detail endpoint returns structured publication metadata — author, publisher, ISBN, page count, binding — alongside a 10-point average rating and vote count. Whether you're building a reading tracker, recommendation engine, or research tool, this API gives you direct access to one of China's largest book community datasets.
Book Metadata and Search
The search_books endpoint accepts a keyword query and returns matching books with id, title, author_name, year, and a cover image URL. Once you have a subject ID, get_book_detail returns the full record: a metadata object keyed by Chinese publication labels (作者, 出版社, 出版年, ISBN, 页数, 装帧, 定价), a rating string out of 10, votes, tags array, intro, and author_intro. Subject IDs are numeric strings like '1007305'.
Charts, New Releases, and Tag Browsing
get_top250 returns the Douban Books Top 250 list, paginated in groups of 25 via the start parameter (0, 25, 50, … 225). Each book entry includes title, id, pub, rating, votes, and a one-line quote. get_monthly_hot_chart and get_new_books require no inputs and return current trending and recently published titles respectively, each with title, id, info, and rating fields.
For tag-based discovery, get_tag_list returns the full tag cloud organized into named categories — 文学, 流行, 文化, 生活, 经管, 科技 — each with a list of tags and their associated book counts. get_books_by_tag then takes a tag string and an optional sort parameter (T for popular, R for recent, S for top rated) plus a start offset for pagination, returning title, url, id, image, pub, rating, count, and desc for each book.
Reviews and Comments
Two endpoints cover user-generated content. get_book_reviews returns long-form reviews for a given book ID, each with user, rating, title, content (excerpt), and date. get_book_short_comments returns brief user comments with user, rating, time, content, and a votes count indicating how many readers found the comment useful. Both endpoints require the Douban subject id as input.
- Build a Chinese book recommendation engine using tag categories and Top 250 ratings from
get_top250andget_tag_list - Populate a reading list app with full publication metadata — ISBN, publisher, page count — via
get_book_detail - Aggregate sentiment for a title by collecting long reviews from
get_book_reviewsalongside short comments fromget_book_short_comments - Track monthly trending books in China using
get_monthly_hot_chartfor content or market research - Seed a book database with cover images, author names, and publication years using
search_booksandget_book_detail - Analyze the distribution of reader ratings across genre tags by combining
get_books_by_tagwith theratingandcountfields - Monitor new releases in the Chinese book market using the
get_new_booksendpoint
| Tier | Price | Credits/month | Rate limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/mo | 100 | 5 req/min |
| Hobby | $30/mo | 1,000 | 20 req/min |
| Developer | $100/mo | 5,000 | 250 req/min |
One credit = one API call regardless of which marketplace API you call. Exceeding the rate limit returns a 429 response. Authenticate with the X-API-Key header.
Does Douban provide an official developer API for book data?+
What does `get_book_detail` return and how granular is the publication metadata?+
metadata object whose keys are the Chinese field labels shown on the book page — typically 作者 (author), 出版社 (publisher), 出版年 (publication year), ISBN, 页数 (pages), 装帧 (binding), and 定价 (price). Not all fields are present for every book; coverage depends on what the source record includes. The endpoint also returns rating, votes, intro, author_intro, tags, and a cover image URL.How does pagination work for tag browsing and the Top 250?+
get_books_by_tag and get_top250 both use a start integer offset. For get_top250 valid values are 0 through 225 in steps of 25, giving 25 books per page. For get_books_by_tag you increment start by the number of results returned per page. There is no limit parameter — page size is fixed by the source.Does the API return user reading lists, want-to-read counts, or personal bookshelves?+
Are the reviews and comments returned in full, or only excerpts?+
get_book_reviews returns a content field that is an excerpt of each long-form review, not the full text. get_book_short_comments returns the complete short comment since those are inherently brief. Full review body text is not currently returned by get_book_reviews. You can fork the API on Parse and revise it to retrieve the full review text from individual review pages.