How to Get Responses (Comments) on a Medium List

Using Medium API JS Package

Fetching responses or comments on a specific Medium list can be extremely valuable for content creators, developers, or marketers looking to analyze engagement and feedback.

Whether you’re building analytics tools or simply want to monitor user interaction on a Medium list, this guide shows you how to achieve this using the medium-api-js package.

By the end, you’ll know how to fetch comments from any Medium list programmatically.

Prerequisites

Before diving into the implementation, ensure you have the following:

• Node.js Installed: Download and install Node.js from Node.js Official Website.
• A Medium API Key: Obtain a Medium API key from the RapidAPI platform.
How to Subscribe to Medium API and Get Your API Key from RapidAPI Platform
• medium-api-js Package: Install the medium-api-js package for accessing the Medium API.
• dotenv Package: Install dotenv for loading environment variables securely.

You can install the necessary dependencies using the following commands:

npm install medium-api-js dotenv

Code Explanation

This script fetches responses to a Medium list by its ID. Let’s break it down step-by-step:

Step 1: Import Required Packages

import Medium from 'medium-api-js';
import dotenv from 'dotenv';

dotenv.config();

• import Medium: The medium-api-js package is used to interact with Medium’s API.
• import dotenv: The dotenv package loads environment variables from a .env file.
• dotenv.coig(): This initializes dotenv, making the environment variables accessible in your code.

Step 2: Initialize Medium API

const medium = new Medium(process.env.RAPIDAPI_KEY);

• process.env.RAPIDAPI_KEY: Fetches your API key securely from the environment variables.
• new Medium(): Creates an instance of the Medium API client using the API key.

Step 3: Fetch List Responses

medium.getListResponses('3d8f744f5370').then(data => {
    console.log('List Responses:', data);
});

• getListResponses('3d8f744f5370'): Fetches responses (comments) for the Medium list with the specified ID (‘3d8f744f5370’).
• .then(data => { ... }): Handles the API response asynchronously. The data parameter contains the list responses.
• console.log(): Outputs the fetched responses to the console.

Running the Code

Save the code to a file named getListResponses.js and execute it using the following command in your terminal:

node getListResponses.js

Ensure that your .env file contains your API key in the following format:

RAPIDAPI_KEY=your_medium_api_key_here

Output Explanation

When you run the script, the output will look like this:

• id: Confirms the ID of the queried Medium list.
• responses: Contains an array of responses (comments) on the list. In this case, it’s empty (‘[]’), indicating no comments.
• count: Indicates the total number of responses. Here, it’s 0, meaning there are no comments on this list.

Potential Use Cases

• Automated Reporting: Generate reports for content creators about the number and nature of responses.
• Community Monitoring: Monitor comments to identify trends, feedback, or sentiment analysis.
• Custom Applications: Use this data in third-party applications to enhance user interaction insights.

Summary

This guide walked you through the setup, implementation, and potential applications of using Medium API JS package to get responses on a Medium list.

If you have any questions about Medium API or this code, feel free to reach out at nishu@mediumapi.com.

Start leveraging Medium’s data today to understand your audience better!