Tumblr API: Is there a way to get the number of likes a Tumblr post receives?

Question

I am writing an application that has to get the number of likes for a Tumblr post in PHP. I am using the Tumblr PHP library and have successfully authenticated and all that. I use Client::getBlogPosts() to get a list of the posts. It returns what is essentially a PHP array with information like:

{
    "blog_name": "jeteon",
    "id": 92729317211,
    "post_url": "http://jeteon.tumblr.com/post/92729317211/where-to-find-libxm-so-2-for-ubuntu",
    "slug": "where-to-find-libxm-so-2-for-ubuntu",
    "type": "link",
    "date": "2014-07-24 13:43:04 GMT",
    "timestamp": 1406209384,
    "state": "published",
    "format": "html",
    "reblog_key": "oA2WcGac",
    "tags": [
      "dakota",
      "ubuntu"
    ],
    "short_url": "http://tmblr.co/Z9ROeu1MN6HTR",
    "highlighted": [],
    "note_count": 0,
    "title": "Where to find libXm.so.2 for Ubuntu",
    "url": "https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/lesstif2",
    "author": null,
    "excerpt": null,
    "publisher": "packages.debian.org",
    "description": "<p>I recently had to install Dakota (<a href=\"http://dakota.sandia.gov\">http://dakota.sandia.gov</a>) and after considerable trouble with prerequisites, found that the binary install on Ubuntu requires (amonst other umentioned libraries) a shared library called libXm.so.2. The library is in a package called lesstif2 which is no longer available, it seems. You can grab the DEB on the above link though.</p>",
    "reblog": {
      "tree_html": ""
    },
    "trail": [
      {
        "blog": {
          "name": "jeteon",
          "theme": {
            "avatar_shape": "square",
            "background_color": "#FAFAFA",
            "body_font": "Helvetica Neue",
            "header_bounds": "",
            "header_image": "http://assets.tumblr.com/images/default_header/optica_pattern_10.png?_v=eafbfb1726b334d86841955ae7b9221c",
            "header_image_focused": "http://assets.tumblr.com/images/default_header/optica_pattern_10_focused_v3.png?_v=eafbfb1726b334d86841955ae7b9221c",
            "header_image_scaled": "http://assets.tumblr.com/images/default_header/optica_pattern_10_focused_v3.png?_v=eafbfb1726b334d86841955ae7b9221c",
            "header_stretch": true,
            "link_color": "#529ECC",
            "show_avatar": true,
            "show_description": true,
            "show_header_image": true,
            "show_title": true,
            "title_color": "#444444",
            "title_font": "Gibson",
            "title_font_weight": "bold"
          }
        },
        "post": {
          "id": "92729317211"
        },
        "content": "<p>I recently had to install Dakota (<a href=\"http://dakota.sandia.gov\">http://dakota.sandia.gov</a>) and after considerable trouble with prerequisites, found that the binary install on Ubuntu requires (amonst other umentioned libraries) a shared library called libXm.so.2. The library is in a package called lesstif2 which is no longer available, it seems. You can grab the DEB on the above link though.</p>",
        "is_root_item": true,
        "is_current_item": true
      }
    ]
  }

The closest field to what I'm looking for is note_count, although this aggregates both likes and reblogs. If the note_count is 0, then there's no problem, but when the note count is 41, I can't tell whether it has been liked 40 times and reblogged once or the converse. Either way, the presence or absence of the liked field already tells you this.

I tried using the Client::getBlogLikes() method but that retrieves a list of posts that the blog has liked (in Tumblr parlance, effectively posts that the creating user liked), which is the converse of what I'm looking for.

The best I could get from the general internet is this article, which suggests using the URL api.tumblr.com/v2/blog/{base-hostname}/likes?api_key={key}, but as far as I can tell from the code, this is the same as using the Client::getBlogLikes() function from the Tumblr PHP library.

Does anyone know a way to get the number of likes a particular post has received? It doesn't need to be a PHP-specific solution.

Answer 1

In case anyone is still searching for this 2 years after the original post... you can do this by appending &notes_info=true to your api call - a collection of notes objects will be returned. If you iterate through these you can count the post types. From what I can see post types are: posted (the original post), like, and reblog. Hope this helps!

Example notes collection from json response: (showing only 1 note)

'notes': [{'avatar_shape': 'square',
           'blog_name': 'xxx',
           'blog_url': 'xxx',
           'blog_uuid': 'xxx',
           'followed': False,
           'timestamp': 1505922448,
           'type': 'like'}],

Answer 2

It seems like for Tumblr API v2 docs, that no, it is not possible. You can only get a count of the total blog likes, or the posts that people liked.