A Weibo hot-search tracker that alerts on your keywords

Description and use

A Python script automatically tracks keyword appearances on Weibo’s hot‑search board, sends alerts, and adds context from recent posts.

Problem

Track when a keyword appears on Weibo’s hot‑search board and receive an alert only once per appearance.

Outcome

The script polls the Weibo hot‑search board every minute, alerts on first appearance of specified keywords, and includes recent post snippets for context. Alerts are sent to stdout and optionally to a webhook.

Workflow

• Install requests and set QOVIA_KEY and optional ALERT_WEBHOOK environment variables.
• Define a function to GET /v1/raw/weibo/hot_search from Qovia API.
• Load a JSON state file of already alerted terms.
• For each board item, check if its word contains any keyword and if it has not been alerted yet.
• If a new hit is found, add it to the alert list and update the state file.
• Retrieve recent posts for the matched term using GET /v1/raw/weibo/search.
• Send the alert (stdout and optional webhook) with term details and post snippets.

Evidence

Weibo's hot-search board is a live list of what China is talking about.

Source

The part that makes an alert tracker usable is not firing every minute for a term that stays on the board for hours.

Source

GET /v1/raw/weibo/hot_search takes no parameters.

Source