closed-linkedin-api 2.5.0
A Python API to interact with LinkedIn without using official API access.
License: MIT
Requires Python: <4.0,>=3.10

<div align="center">

# LinkedIn API for Python

![Build](https://img.shields.io/github/actions/workflow/status/EseToni/open-linkedin-api/ci.yml?label=Build&logo=github) 
[![Documentation](https://img.shields.io/readthedocs/open-linkedin-api?label=Docs)](https://github.com/EseToni/open-linkedin-api/tree/main/documentation) 
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[![Discord](https://img.shields.io/badge/Discord-5865F2?logo=discord&logoColor=ffffff)](https://discord.gg/yourdiscordlink)


Search profiles, send messages, get posts and more in Python. No official API access required.

<p align="center">
    <a href="https://github.com/EseToni/open-linkedin-api/tree/main/documentation">Documentation</a>
    ·
    <a href="#quick-start">Quick Start</a>
    ·
    <a href="#how-it-works">How it works</a>
</p>

</div>

<br>

## Features

- ✅ No official API access required. Just use a valid LinkedIn user account.
- ✅ Direct HTTP API interface. No Selenium, Puppeteer, or other browser-based scraping methods.
- ✅ Get and search profiles, companies, and posts
- ✅ Search posts by keyword with filters (date, content type, sort order)
- ✅ Send messages and manage connections
- ✅ Send and accept connection requests
- ✅ Get and react to posts (comments, reactions via GraphQL)
- ✅ Get company posts and follow/unfollow companies

And more! [Read the docs](https://github.com/EseToni/open-linkedin-api/tree/main/documentation) for all API methods.

> [!IMPORTANT]
> This library is not officially supported by LinkedIn. Using this library might violate LinkedIn's Terms of Service. Use it at your own risk.

## Installation

> [!NOTE]
> Python >= 3.10 required

###

```bash
pip install open-linkedin-api
```

Or, for bleeding edge:

```bash
pip install git+https://github.com/EseToni/open-linkedin-api
```

### Quick Start

> [!TIP]
> See all API methods on the [docs](https://github.com/EseToni/open-linkedin-api/tree/main/documentation).

The following snippet demonstrates a few basic linkedin_api use cases:

```python
from open_linkedin_api import Linkedin

# Authenticate using cookies (recommended)
api = Linkedin(li_at='your_li_at_cookie', jsessionid='your_jsessionid_cookie')

# GET a profile
profile = api.get_profile_graphql(public_id='billy-g')

# GET a full profile with positions, educations, skills
full_profile = api.get_profile(public_id='billy-g')

# GET contact info
contact_info = api.get_profile_contact_info_dash(public_id='billy-g')

# SEARCH posts by keyword
posts = api.search_posts('artificial intelligence', count=5)
for post in posts:
    print(post['author']['name'], '-', post['text'][:100])

# GET company data
company = api.get_company_graphql('microsoft')
print(company['name'], '- Followers:', company.get('followerCount'))
```

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## Development

### Dependencies

- [`poetry`](https://python-poetry.org/docs/)
- A valid Linkedin user account (don't use your personal account, if possible)

### Development installation

1. Create a `.env` config file (use `.env.example` as a reference)
2. Install dependencies using `poetry`:

   ```bash
   poetry install
   poetry self add poetry-plugin-dotenv
   ```

### Run tests

Run all tests:

```bash
poetry run pytest
```

Run unit tests:

```bash
poetry run pytest tests/unit
```

Run E2E tests:

```bash
poetry run pytest tests/e2e
```

### Lint

```bash
poetry run black --check .
```

Or to fix:

```bash
poetry run black .
```

### Troubleshooting

#### I keep getting a `CHALLENGE`

Linkedin will throw you a curve ball in the form of a Challenge URL. We currently don't handle this, and so you're kinda screwed. We think it could be only IP-based (i.e. logging in from different location). Your best chance at resolution is to log out and log back in on your browser.

**Known reasons for Challenge** include:

- 2FA
- Rate-limit - "It looks like you’re visiting a very high number of pages on LinkedIn.". Note - n=1 experiment where this page was hit after ~900 contiguous requests in a single session (within the hour) (these included random delays between each request), as well as a bunch of testing, so who knows the actual limit.

Please add more as you come across them.

#### Search problems

- Mileage may vary when searching general keywords like "software" using the standard `search` method. They've recently added some smarts around search whereby they group results by people, company, jobs etc. if the query is general enough. Try to use an entity-specific search method (i.e. search_people) where possible.

## How it works

This project attempts to provide a simple Python interface for the LinkedIn API.

> Do you mean the [legit LinkedIn API](https://developer.linkedin.com/)?

NO! To retrieve structured data, the [LinkedIn Website](https://linkedin.com) uses a service they call **Voyager**. Voyager endpoints give us access to pretty much everything we could want from LinkedIn: profiles, companies, connections, messages, etc. - anything that you can see on linkedin.com, we can get from Voyager.

This project aims to provide complete coverage for Voyager.

[How does it work?](#deep-dive)

### Deep dive

Voyager endpoints look like this:

```text
https://www.linkedin.com/voyager/api/identity/profileView/tom-quirk
```

Or, more clearly

```text
 ___________________________________ _______________________________
|             base path             |            resource           |
https://www.linkedin.com/voyager/api /identity/profileView/tom-quirk
```

They are authenticated with a simple cookie, which we send with every request, along with a bunch of headers.

To get a cookie, you can either extract `li_at` and `JSESSIONID` cookies from your browser (recommended), or POST a given username and password (of a valid LinkedIn user account) to `https://www.linkedin.com/uas/authenticate`.

### Find new endpoints

We're looking at the LinkedIn website and we spot some data we want. What now?

The following describes the most reliable method to find relevant endpoints:

1. `view source`
1. `command-f`/search the page for some keyword in the data. This will exist inside of a `<code>` tag.
1. Scroll down to the **next adjacent element** which will be another `<code>` tag, probably with an `id` that looks something like

   ```html
   <code style="display: none" id="datalet-bpr-guid-3900675">
   	{"request":"/voyager/api/identity/profiles/tom-quirk/profileView","status":200,"body":"bpr-guid-3900675"}
   </code>
   ```

The value of `request` is the url! 🤘

You can also use the `network` tab in you browsers developer tools, but you will encounter mixed results.

### How Clients query Voyager

linkedin.com uses the [Rest-li Protocol](https://linkedin.github.io/rest.li/spec/protocol) for querying data. Rest-li is an internal query language/syntax where clients (like linkedin.com) specify what data they want. It's conceptually similar to the GraphQL.

Here's an example of making a request for an organisation's `name` and `groups` (the Linkedin groups it manages):

```text
/voyager/api/organization/companies?decoration=(name,groups*~(entityUrn,largeLogo,groupName,memberCount,websiteUrl,url))&q=universalName&universalName=linkedin
```

The "querying" happens in the `decoration` parameter, which looks like the following:

```text
(
    name,
    groups*~(entityUrn,largeLogo,groupName,memberCount,websiteUrl,url)
)
```

Here, we request an organisation name and a list of groups, where for each group we want `largeLogo`, `groupName`, and so on.

Different endpoints use different parameters (and perhaps even different syntaxes) to specify these queries. Notice that the above query had a parameter `q` whose value was `universalName`; the query was then specified with the `decoration` parameter.

In contrast, the `/search/cluster` endpoint uses `q=guided`, and specifies its query with the `guided` parameter, whose value is something like

```text
List(v->PEOPLE)
```

It could be possible to document (and implement a nice interface for) this query language - as we add more endpoints to this project, I'm sure it will become more clear if such a thing would be possible (and if it's worth it).

### Release a new version

1. Bump `version` in `pyproject.toml`
1. `poetry build`
1. `poetry publish`
1. Draft release notes in GitHub.

## Disclaimer

This library is not endorsed or supported by LinkedIn. It is an unofficial library intended for educational purposes and personal use only. By using this library, you agree to not hold the author or contributors responsible for any consequences resulting from its usage.