How to get the body of an answer using the Stack Exchange API?

Question

I am using StackAPI to get the most voted questions and the most voted answers to those questions:-

from stackapi import StackAPI
SITE = StackAPI('stackoverflow')
SITE.max_pages=1
SITE.page_size=10

questions = SITE.fetch('questions', min=20, tagged='python', sort='votes')
for quest in questions['items']:
    if 'title' not in quest or quest['is_answered'] == False:
        continue
    title = quest['title']
    print('Question :- {0}'.format(title))
    question_id = quest['question_id']
    print('Question ID :- {0}'.format(question_id))
    top_answer = SITE.fetch('questions/' + str(question_id) + '/answers', order = 'desc', sort='votes')
    print('Most Voted Answer ID :- {0}'.format(top_answer['items'][0]['answer_id']))

Now using this answer_id I would like to get the body of that answer. I can get the rest of the details by using this API link.

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 12 '18 at 21:49

Refer to these posts on Stack Apps:

You need to use a custom filter to get question/answer/post bodies.

The good news is that you can also use the custom filter to get the answer data at the same time as you get the questions -- eliminating the need for later API calls.

For example, if you call the /questions route with the filter:
!*SU8CGYZitCB.D*(BDVIficKj7nFMLLDij64nVID)N9aK3GmR9kT4IzT*5iO_1y3iZ)6W.G*

You get results like:

"items": [ {
    "tags": ["python", "iterator", "generator", "yield", "coroutine"],
    "answers": [ {
        "owner": {"user_id": 8458, "display_name": "Douglas Mayle"},
        "is_accepted": false,
        "score": 248,
        "creation_date": 1224800643,
        "answer_id": 231778,
        "body": "<p><code>yield</code> is just like <code>return</code> - it returns what..."
        }, {
        "owner": {"user_id": 22656, "display_name": "Jon Skeet"},
        "is_accepted": false,
        "score": 139,
        "creation_date": 1224800766,
        "answer_id": 231788,
        "body": "<p>It's returning a generator. I'm not particularly familiar with Python, ..."
        }, {
        ...
    } ],
    "owner": {"user_id": 18300, "display_name": "Alex. S."},
    "is_answered": true,
    "accepted_answer_id": 231855,
    "answer_count": 40,
    "score": 8742,
    "creation_date": 1224800471,
    "question_id": 231767,
    "title": "What does the &quot;yield&quot; keyword do?"
    },
    ...

So, change this:

questions = SITE.fetch('questions', min=20, tagged='python', sort='votes')

To something like this:

questions = SITE.fetch('questions', min=20, tagged='python', sort='votes', filter='!*SU8CGYZitCB.D*(BDVIficKj7nFMLLDij64nVID)N9aK3GmR9kT4IzT*5iO_1y3iZ)6W.G*')

then adjust your for loop accordingly.

How to get the body of an answer using the Stack Exchange API?

1 Answers1