pyktok: A Python repository from paskn

March 16, 2023: Video downloading works again; comment downloading is still broken.

Unfortunately Pyktok's video and comment downloading functions are broken as of Feb 10, 2023. Downloading of metadata still works. If you know anything about web scraping, help us out on the Issues page. Thanks!

Pyktok

A simple module to collect video, text, and metadata from TikTok.

We developed Pyktok ("pick-tock") because none of the existing TikTok data collection utilities we could find suited our needs. Pyktok pulls its data directly from the JSON objects embedded in Tiktok pages and from hidden APIs with no public documentation. Here are its major features:

Download TikTok videos
Download video metadata
Download up to 20 video comments
Download 15-30 videos and/or metadata lines from hashtag, user, and music pages displaying multiple videos
Download full TikTok JSON data objects (in case you want to extract data from parts of the object not included in the above functions)

R users, check out traktok, an R port of Pyktok.

This program may stop working suddenly if TikTok changes how it stores its data (see Freelon, 2018). Some functions may require you to be logged in to TikTok, which means they may not work on cloud servers that don't have Chrome or Firefox installed.

TikTok now offers an official research API to US-based academics--you can apply for access here.

Please note that a number of US states have banned TikTok on state-owned devices, which may include IT resources provided by state universities. Individuals employed by such institutions are advised to use Pyktok only within applicable laws and regulations.

Installation

pip install pyktok

Requirements

Pyktok relies on the following packages:

Usage

import pyktok as pyk

Please note that functions that start with "get" will return data to working memory, while those starting with "save" will save data to disk without returning anything.

To download a single TikTok video and one line of metadata to the file "video_data.csv" ('chrome' can be changed to 'firefox' if necessary):

pyk.save_tiktok('https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7106594312292453675?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1',
	        True,
                'video_data.csv',
		'chrome')

To download another TikTok video and add its metadata to the same file as above:

pyk.save_tiktok('https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7011536772089924869?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1',
	        True,
                'video_data.csv',
		'chrome')

To download metadata ONLY from the video URLs used in the preceding two lines of code (to also download the videos, change False to True). If TikTok autobans the scraper, try changing the 1 to a higher number to increase the number of seconds between executions.

tiktok_videos = ['https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7106594312292453675?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1',
                 'https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7011536772089924869?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1']
pyk.save_tiktok_multi_urls(tiktok_videos,
                           False,
                     	  'tiktok_data.csv',
                     	   1)

To download up to 30 metadata lines from a user page (note, for this to work you must set the browser_name parameter to a browser on your system that you have used to access TikTok and that is supported by browser_cookie3. I think the only valid values are 'chrome' and 'firefox'. Also you can get the videos by setting save_video to True):

pyk.save_tiktok_multi_page('https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok',save_video=False,save_metadata=True,browser_name='chrome')

To download up to 15 metadata lines from a hashtag page:

pyk.save_tiktok_multi_page('https://www.tiktok.com/tag/datascience?lang=en',save_video=False,save_metadata=True)

To download up to 15 metadata lines from a music page:

pyk.save_tiktok_multi_page('https://www.tiktok.com/music/Anti-Hero-7156822419213125634?lang=en',save_video=False,save_metadata=True)

To get an individual video's JSON object:

tt_json = pyk.get_tiktok_json('https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7011536772089924869?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1')

To download all video comments initially visible on the page (previous versions of this function used TT's hidden API to capture many thousands of comments, but TT has disabled this feature, so the current function uses browser automation--which is unfortunately very slow--to pull only the comments that initially appear. However, you could use this function to download comments from videos periodically, which should give you a larger number of comments)

pyk.save_visible_comments('https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7011536772089924869?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1')

To download visible comments from multiple videos at the same time, saving to the same file (to save each video's comments to its own file, leave the second parameter of save_visible_comments blank):

#using the same tiktok_videos list created above
for v in tiktok_videos:
    pyk.save_visible_comments(v,'tiktok_comments.csv')

TikTok's servers may not love it if you run some of the above functions at full speed, so I recommend increasing the sleep parameter if you get autobanned. I haven't tested this extensively so I have no idea if or when autobans start to kick in.

Pyktok can also be run from a browser window using streamlit. To do so, simply navigate to your pyktok directory in a command prompt (it should contain the file app.py) and run streamlit run app.py. This should pop up a browser window that allows you to control Pyktok using graphical affordances.

Mostly by @dfreelon with contributions from (in chronological order):

paskn/pyktok

Pyktok