quoras: A Python API for Quora Data Collection to Increase Multi-Language Social Science Research

Abstract

Quora is a fast growing crowdsourced Q/A site that also creates online social networks and community practices among the users. Operating in several regional languages, it catalyzes more contextual discussions on local incidents and issues. To understand how language-specific social communities conduct Q/A-based discussions on online forums, we need to study Quora platform. As the first step to that, we need a data collection API. We introduce quoras, a Python API for collecting data from Quora. The API relies on Selenium, which is an open-source cross platform web automation framework. The API operates by creating custom HTTPS requests to Quora and parsing responses from it. It has the ability to perform many types of advanced searches that are otherwise only available on the Quora website, and not through any other existing APIs. The quoras API is released under an open-source MIT license and available along with the full API reference on GitHub. The latest stable release is also available on Python Package Index (PyPI).