Q&A Platform API -- Read Operations

Read questions, answers, tags, and user profiles from Q&A platforms. Stack Overflow has a public API. Quora has no official API (use web scraping or third-party services). Dev.to has a public API.

Stack Exchange API (Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User, etc.)

Base URL: https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3

Authentication

Register an app at https://stackapps.com/apps/oauth/register to get an API key. An API key is not required but raises your rate limit from 300 to 10,000 requests/day.

# Append to all requests:
?key=YOUR_API_KEY&site=stackoverflow

The site parameter selects the Stack Exchange site: stackoverflow, serverfault, superuser, askubuntu, etc.

Search for questions by keywords

curl "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/search/advanced?order=desc&sort=creation&q=KEYWORDS&tagged=TAG1;TAG2&accepted=false&answers=0&site=stackoverflow&key=YOUR_API_KEY&filter=withbody&pagesize=50"

Key parameters:

• q: Free-text search query
• tagged: Semicolon-separated tags to filter by (e.g., python;api)
• accepted=false: Only questions without an accepted answer (high opportunity)
• answers=0 or answers=1: Questions with few answers (less competition)
• sort: creation (newest), votes, activity, relevance
• filter=withbody: Include question body text in response (costs more quota)
• pagesize: Max 100

Get questions by tag

curl "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/questions?order=desc&sort=creation&tagged=TAG&site=stackoverflow&key=YOUR_API_KEY&pagesize=50"

Get a specific question with answers

curl "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/questions/QUESTION_ID?order=desc&sort=votes&site=stackoverflow&key=YOUR_API_KEY&filter=withbody"

# Get answers for a question
curl "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/questions/QUESTION_ID/answers?order=desc&sort=votes&site=stackoverflow&key=YOUR_API_KEY&filter=withbody"

Get unanswered questions by tag

curl "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/questions/unanswered?order=desc&sort=creation&tagged=TAG&site=stackoverflow&key=YOUR_API_KEY&pagesize=50"

Get tag info and related tags

# Tag details
curl "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/tags/TAG/info?site=stackoverflow&key=YOUR_API_KEY"

# Related tags (find adjacent topics)
curl "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/tags/TAG/related?site=stackoverflow&key=YOUR_API_KEY"

# Tag synonyms
curl "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/tags/TAG/synonyms?site=stackoverflow&key=YOUR_API_KEY"

Get user profile and stats

curl "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/users/USER_ID?site=stackoverflow&key=YOUR_API_KEY"

# User's top answers
curl "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/users/USER_ID/answers?order=desc&sort=votes&site=stackoverflow&key=YOUR_API_KEY&pagesize=20"

Response format

All responses are JSON wrapped in a common envelope:

{
  "items": [
    {
      "question_id": 12345,
      "title": "How to parse JSON in Python?",
      "body": "<p>HTML body of the question...</p>",
      "tags": ["python", "json", "parsing"],
      "score": 42,
      "answer_count": 3,
      "view_count": 15000,
      "is_answered": true,
      "accepted_answer_id": 12346,
      "creation_date": 1711843200,
      "owner": {"user_id": 999, "display_name": "username", "reputation": 5000}
    }
  ],
  "has_more": true,
  "quota_max": 10000,
  "quota_remaining": 9950
}

Rate limits

• Without API key: 300 requests/day per IP
• With API key: 10,000 requests/day
• With access token: 10,000 requests/day
• Responses are compressed (gzip). Always send Accept-Encoding: gzip.

Dev.to API

Base URL: https://dev.to/api

Authentication

Generate an API key at https://dev.to/settings/extensions. Include in requests:

api-key: YOUR_DEV_TO_API_KEY

Search articles (questions tagged with #discuss or #help)

curl "https://dev.to/api/articles?tag=discuss&top=7&per_page=30" \
  -H "api-key: YOUR_DEV_TO_API_KEY"

# Search by keyword
curl "https://dev.to/api/articles?tag=help&per_page=30" \
  -H "api-key: YOUR_DEV_TO_API_KEY"

Get article comments

curl "https://dev.to/api/comments?a_id=ARTICLE_ID" \
  -H "api-key: YOUR_DEV_TO_API_KEY"

Quora (No Official API)

Quora does not provide a public API. Options for programmatic access:

1. Web scraping with Playwright/Puppeteer: Navigate to https://www.quora.com/search?q=KEYWORDS, parse question titles, URLs, answer counts, and follower counts from the DOM. Respect robots.txt and rate-limit to 1 request per 5 seconds.

2. Quora Spaces RSS: Some Quora Spaces publish RSS feeds at https://www.quora.com/q/SPACE_NAME/rss. Monitor these with n8n's RSS node.

3. Third-party services: Services like Serper.dev or SerpAPI can search Quora programmatically by running site:quora.com KEYWORDS queries and returning structured results.

4. Google Custom Search API: Configure a custom search engine restricted to quora.com and query it via the Google CSE API.

# Using SerpAPI to search Quora
curl "https://serpapi.com/search.json?engine=google&q=site:quora.com+YOUR+KEYWORDS&api_key=YOUR_SERPAPI_KEY&num=20"

Error Handling

• 400 Bad Request: Invalid parameters. Check tag names and site parameter.
• 401 Unauthorized: Invalid or expired access token. Re-authenticate.
• 402 Payment Required: Quota exceeded. Wait until daily reset (midnight UTC).
• 429 Too Many Requests: Backoff. Check backoff field in response -- wait that many seconds.
• 502/503: Service temporarily unavailable. Retry with exponential backoff.
• Throttle field: Stack Exchange responses include backoff (seconds to wait) when you are being throttled.