Reddit Comments Scraper

Extract comments and discussions from Reddit subreddit streams. This Apify actor provides structured data with rich metadata, pagination, and filtering, suitable for data analysis, research, and monitoring.

Overview

The actor scrapes live comment feeds from specified subreddits. It handles pagination, extracts comprehensive metadata for each comment and its linked post, and outputs structured JSON. It's built for reliability with error handling and respectful rate limiting.

Key Features

• Comment Extraction: Scrapes live comment streams from any public subreddit.
• Pagination: Supports multi-page scraping with automatic cursor management for continuous data collection.
• Rich Metadata: Captures a detailed dataset for each comment.
• Structured Output: Returns clean JSON with comments organized in batches.

Extracted metadata includes:
* Comment Details: ID, author, body text, score, creation timestamp, and permalink.
* Post Context: Title, subreddit, and ID of the parent post.
* User Info: Author username and flair.
* Engagement: Upvote count and score.
* Thread Structure: Parent comment ID to map reply hierarchies.

How to Use

Configure the actor with input parameters via the Apify console, API, or a scheduled run. The core requirement is specifying a target subreddit.

Basic Configuration:

{
  "subreddit": "technology",
  "maxPages": 5
}

This scrapes up to 5 pages of the latest comments from r/technology.

Input Parameters

Output Format

The actor outputs dataset items in JSON format. Each item represents a batch of comments.

Example Output Item:

{
  "type": "comments_batch",
  "comments": [
    {
      "comment_id": "abc123",
      "author": "username",
      "content": "This is a comment text.",
      "score": 42,
      "created_utc": 1678886400,
      "permalink": "/r/technology/comments/...",
      "post_title": "The linked post title",
      "post_subreddit": "technology",
      "post_id": "xyz789",
      "upvotes": 42,
      "user_flair": null,
      "parent_id": "t1_def456"
    }
  ]
}

The dataset can be exported to JSON, CSV, or other formats via the Apify platform. For full documentation and to run the actor, visit: https://apify.com?fpr=python_automation