Stack Overflow Questions Scraper

Collect questions from Stack Overflow straight from its free, official Stack Exchange API. There is nothing to configure — no API key, no login, and no proxy — the API is public and rock-solid.

Filter by tag, search question titles, choose how the results are sorted, pick how many you want, and get back one tidy JSON row per question.

Features

• Fetch questions by one or more tags (AND-combined, e.g. python + pandas).
• Optionally run a free-text title search instead of a plain tag listing.
• Sort by most votes, recent activity, newest or hot.
• Paginates automatically (100 per page) until your maxItems target is reached.
• Emits one flat, ready-to-use JSON record per question.
• Honours the API's backoff signal so the run stays polite and never gets throttled.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
tags	array	—	Only questions with these tags (AND-combined), e.g. python, pandas.
query	string	—	Optional free-text search in question titles. When set, the search endpoint is used.
sort	select	votes	Order results by votes, activity, creation or hot.
maxItems	integer	50	Maximum number of questions to fetch.

Example input

{
  "tags": ["python"],
  "sort": "votes",
  "maxItems": 10
}

Or search question titles:

{
  "query": "async await",
  "tags": ["javascript"],
  "sort": "votes",
  "maxItems": 25
}

Output

Each dataset record looks like this:

{
  "questionId": 231767,
  "title": "What does the "yield" keyword do in Python?",
  "link": "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/231767/what-does-the-yield-keyword-do-in-python",
  "score": 13024,
  "viewCount": 3405620,
  "answerCount": 51,
  "isAnswered": true,
  "tags": ["python", "iterator", "generator", "yield", "coroutine"],
  "owner": "Alex. S.",
  "ownerReputation": 45932,
  "creationDate": "2008-10-23T22:21:11.000Z",
  "lastActivityDate": "2024-06-19T08:14:02.000Z"
}

Field	Description
questionId	Stack Overflow question ID.
title	Question title (as returned by the API).
link	Direct link to the question.
score	Net vote score.
viewCount	Total number of views.
answerCount	Number of answers.
isAnswered	Whether the question has an accepted/qualifying answer.
tags	Array of tags on the question.
owner	Author's display name (null if unavailable).
ownerReputation	Author's reputation (null if unavailable).
creationDate	When the question was asked, as an ISO 8601 timestamp.
lastActivityDate	Last activity time, as an ISO 8601 timestamp.

Pricing

This actor uses the pay-per-event model: you are charged once per question returned (the question-scraped event). Nothing else is billed.

Data source

The actor talks to the official Stack Exchange API (version 2.3), scoped to the stackoverflow site:

• Base URL: https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3
• Tag listing: /questions?tagged=<tags>&sort=<sort>&order=desc&site=stackoverflow
• Title search: /search?intitle=<query>&tagged=<tags>&sort=<sort>&order=desc&site=stackoverflow

The API is free and requires no authentication for modest volumes.

License

MIT © Assia Fadli