Reddit Search API examples for SocQ

Search public Reddit posts by query and publication window, returning normalized titles, text, authors, community context, timestamps, media, and visible engagement.

Try Reddit Search API · Get an API key · Documentation · All SocQ examples

Use cases

• Topic discussion discovery: Use post titles, body text, community names, and source URLs to find public discussions matching a defined subject.
• Source-traceable research datasets: Preserve post IDs, URLs, authors, publication times, and discovery_input so each collected record remains connected to its source and query.
• Time-window engagement comparison: Combine published_within with created_at, collected_at, upvotes_count, comments_count, and upvote_ratio to compare bounded result samples.
• Monitor recurring research queries: Rerun versioned search terms and retain discovery input, post IDs, publication times, and collection times for traceable updates.

API behavior

• query accepts one non-empty public-post search expression.
• results_limit defaults to 100 and accepts integers from 1 through 2,000.
• published_within accepts hour, day, week, month, year, or all; all is the default.
• Search results are bounded public samples and can change between otherwise identical requests.

All requests use the shared asynchronous flow:

submit -> task_id -> poll task -> read every cursor page -> save results

Quick start

cp .env.example .env
export SOCQ_API_KEY="your-api-key"

Run the complete Node.js workflow:

cd node
npm start

Run the complete Python workflow:

python3 -m pip install -r python/requirements.txt
python3 python/main.py

Both examples load payload.example.json, retry transient API responses, wait for task completion, read every cursor page, and save a paginated public Reddit search dataset with query and publication-window context to output/results.json.

Never expose SOCQ_API_KEY in browser code, mobile apps, public repositories, screenshots, fixtures, or logs.

Request

POST https://api.socq.ai/v1/reddit/search
Authorization: Bearer <SOCQ_API_KEY>
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "query": "open source data tools",
  "results_limit": 100,
  "published_within": "month"
}

The submit response contains data.task_id. Poll the task endpoint until data.status becomes succeeded or failed, then continue with data.results.next_cursor while data.results.has_more is true.

Complete workflow example

The Node.js and Python programs implement the production-shaped happy path:

1. Load and validate configuration.
2. Submit the endpoint-specific payload.
3. Retry rate-pressure and transient server responses with bounded backoff.
4. Poll the asynchronous task with a ten-minute application timeout.
5. Stop cleanly on a failed task and surface the public error message.
6. Read all cursor pages instead of silently returning only the first page.
7. Write a stable JSON artifact containing task metadata and normalized records.

Use the synthetic files in fixtures/ for tests and documentation. They do not contain customer, account, or production data.

Production notes

See docs/production-notes.md for validation, retry, timeout, pagination, deduplication, logging, and endpoint-specific guidance.

Responsible use and platform scope

• Use only publicly accessible Reddit posts, comments, subreddits, search results, and fields supported by the selected endpoint.
• Do not use the examples to access private communities, restricted content, deleted content, login-only surfaces, or authentication controls.
• SocQ is not an official API of the represented social platform and is not affiliated with or endorsed by that platform.
• Before production use, assess the laws, platform terms, privacy obligations, and retention requirements that apply to your organization and use case.
• Collect only the fields needed for a defined purpose, restrict access, set retention periods, and support correction or deletion workflows where required.
• Platform names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.

This section describes the public-data boundary; it is not legal advice or a guarantee that every use case is permitted in every jurisdiction.

Repository contents

Path	Purpose
curl/request.md	Copy-paste submit, poll, and pagination requests
node/index.mjs	Complete Node.js workflow
python/main.py	Complete Python workflow
payload.example.json	Safe endpoint-specific request body
fixtures/	Synthetic submit and task response shapes
docs/production-notes.md	Production integration guidance