Retrieve rich Xiaohongshu note data with Python

What you need

• A subscription to XHS Data API.
• A server-side RapidAPI key.
• A current public note URL containing the xsec_token copied with that note.

export X_RAPIDAPI_KEY="your_rapidapi_key"
export XHS_NOTE_URL="complete_current_public_note_url"

Validate the URL first

/note/parse_url performs local validation and extracts URL components without fetching upstream note data.

import os
import requests

base_url = "https://xhs-data-api.p.rapidapi.com"
headers = {
    "X-RapidAPI-Key": os.environ["X_RAPIDAPI_KEY"],
    "X-RapidAPI-Host": "xhs-data-api.p.rapidapi.com",
}

parsed = requests.get(
    f"{base_url}/note/parse_url",
    headers=headers,
    params={"url": os.environ["XHS_NOTE_URL"], "raw": "false"},
    timeout=30,
)
parsed.raise_for_status()
print(parsed.json()["data"]["note_id"])

Retrieve normalized detail

detail = requests.get(
    f"{base_url}/note/detail_from_url",
    headers=headers,
    params={"url": os.environ["XHS_NOTE_URL"], "raw": "false"},
    timeout=45,
)
detail.raise_for_status()
data = detail.json()["data"]
note = data["note"]

print("title:", note.get("title"))
print("author:", (note.get("author") or {}).get("nickname"))
print("images:", len(note.get("images") or []))
print("request_id:", data["request_id"])

The normalized contract can include author identity, description, engagement counts, tags, timestamps, location, images, video, music, and media dimensions when the public source supplies them.

Handle failures

Keep data.request_id from every error. A retryable 503 REQUEST_TIMEOUT may include Retry-After; wait before retrying the identical request. When a token expires, obtain a current complete public URL instead of inventing or transferring a token.