Getting Counts for Twitter Links, Facebook Likes/Shares, and Google (+1) PlusOnes in C# or PHP

By John Dyer on June 7, 2011March 5, 2020

I am working on a project where I need to know the number of social shares on Facebook, Twitter, and Google +1 (plusone). Facebook and Twitter make this easy with a simple URL that returns clear JSON data, but Google has not offered an official way to do it yet. However, I found someone who tracked down how to do it using Google’s JSON-RPC API, and I’ve repackaged them together in ASP.NET and PHP for anyone who wants to give it a try.

Data URLs

Here’s where you can find the data

Facebook	http://graph.facebook.com/?ids=YOURURL
Twitter	http://urls.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=YOURURL
Google	https://clients6.google.com/rpc [see below for JSON-RPC]

ASP.NET C#

Note: Since I’m using “dynamic,” this requires .NET 4.0. Also, I’m using the JavaScriptSerializer class which is officially depreciated, but will probably not actually be removed. You could also easily use Regex to get these simple values.

int GetTweets(string url) {
	string jsonString = new System.Net.WebClient().DownloadString("http://urls.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=" + url);
	var json = new System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize(jsonString);
	int count = (int)json["count"];
	return count;
}
int GetLikes(string url) {
	string jsonString = new System.Net.WebClient().DownloadString("http://graph.facebook.com/?ids=" + url);
	var json = new System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize(jsonString);
	int count = json[url]["shares"];
	return count;
}
int GetPlusOnes(string url) {
	string googleApiUrl = "https://clients6.google.com/rpc"; //?key=AIzaSyCKSbrvQasunBoV16zDH9R33D88CeLr9gQ";
	string postData = @"[{""method"":""pos.plusones.get"",""id"":""p"",""params"":{""nolog"":true,""id"":""" + url + @""",""source"":""widget"",""userId"":""@viewer"",""groupId"":""@self""},""jsonrpc"":""2.0"",""key"":""p"",""apiVersion"":""v1""}]";
	System.Net.HttpWebRequest request = (System.Net.HttpWebRequest)System.Net.WebRequest.Create(googleApiUrl);
	request.Method = "POST";
	request.ContentType = "application/json-rpc";
	request.ContentLength = postData.Length;
	System.IO.Stream writeStream = request.GetRequestStream();
	UTF8Encoding encoding = new UTF8Encoding();
	byte[] bytes = encoding.GetBytes(postData);
	writeStream.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
	writeStream.Close();
	System.Net.HttpWebResponse response = (System.Net.HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
	System.IO.Stream responseStream = response.GetResponseStream();
	System.IO.StreamReader readStream = new System.IO.StreamReader(responseStream, Encoding.UTF8);
	string jsonString = readStream.ReadToEnd();
	readStream.Close();
	responseStream.Close();
	response.Close();
	var json = new System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize(jsonString);
	int count = Int32.Parse(json[0]["result"]["metadata"]["globalCounts"]["count"].ToString().Replace(".0", ""));
	return count;
}

PHP

Again, thanks to Tom Anthony for the Google part

function get_tweets($url) {
	$json_string = file_get_contents('http://urls.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=' . $url);
	$json = json_decode($json_string, true);
	return intval( $json['count'] );
}
function get_likes($url) {
	$json_string = file_get_contents('http://graph.facebook.com/?ids=' . $url);
	$json = json_decode($json_string, true);
	return intval( $json[$url]['shares'] );
}
function get_plusones($url) {
	$curl = curl_init();
	curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://clients6.google.com/rpc");
	curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
	curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, '[{"method":"pos.plusones.get","id":"p","params":{"nolog":true,"id":"' . $url . '","source":"widget","userId":"@viewer","groupId":"@self"},"jsonrpc":"2.0","key":"p","apiVersion":"v1"}]');
	curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
	curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-type: application/json'));
	$curl_results = curl_exec ($curl);
	curl_close ($curl);
	$json = json_decode($curl_results, true);
	return intval( $json[0]['result']['metadata']['globalCounts']['count'] );
}

Hope that helps someone out there!

23 thoughts on “Getting Counts for Twitter Links, Facebook Likes/Shares, and Google (+1) PlusOnes in C# or PHP”

Seth says:

June 7, 2011 at 11:39 pm

just for fun I cobbled together a python example
import urllib2, json
data = ‘[{"method":"pos.plusones.get","id":"p","params":{"nolog":true,"id":"%s","source":"widget","userId":"@viewer","groupId":"@self"},"jsonrpc":"2.0","key":"p","apiVersion":"v1"}]’ % "http://www.tomanthony.co.uk/"
url = "https://clients6.google.com/rpc?key=AIzaSyCKSbrvQasunBoV16zDH9R33D88CeLr9gQ"
req = urllib2.Request(url, data, {‘Content-Type’: ‘application/json’})
f = urllib2.urlopen(req)
response = f.read()
f.close()
result = json.loads(response)
print int(result[0][‘result’][‘metadata’][‘globalCounts’][‘count’])
1. Cube3x says:
  
  January 23, 2013 at 10:29 am
  
  Really helpful article. Here is a complete list of code snippets to fetch social counts from various sites like facebook, twitter, google plus, pinterest etc: http://cube3x.com/get-social-share-counts-a-complete-guide/
Nick says:

November 10, 2011 at 10:23 pm

Helps me. I was looking for that. i get an error but i think its a firefox error but ill throw it out there just in case.
permission denied from to get property Proxy.InstallTrigger.
if you get any idea what that is.
Dragomir says:

December 17, 2011 at 6:57 am

If you want to get Facebook `total_count` (e.g. `likes` + `shares`) here is a modification of the function:
function get_likes($url) {
$json_string = file_get_contents(‘http://graph.facebook.com/?ids=’ . $url);
$json = json_decode($json_string, true);
$total_count = 0;
if (isset($json[$url][‘shares’])) $total_count += intval($json[$url][‘shares’]);
if (isset($json[$url][‘likes’])) $total_count += intval($json[$url][‘likes’]);
return $total_count;
}
andy killen says:

January 4, 2012 at 5:25 am

Thanks John, just what I needed. the google+ details were illusive elsewhere. And thanks for Tom also for doing the php version.
Alex says:

January 18, 2012 at 10:52 pm

Hi,
Can anyone explain how to use the PHP code to display the number of likes on a html page?
I would like to know how to use it.
cheers
Alex
Josie Martin says:

January 28, 2012 at 2:36 am

I reply on marketing on Facebook and Google Plus a lot. My favorite site to get Likes for my Facebook page is GetLikesEasy.com. It’s a fast and easy Like Exchange system, and I’ve already gotten more than a thousand Likes. Check it out!. http://GetLikesEasy.com. My favorite site to get Plus Ones for Google+ is GetPlusOnesGoogle.com. http://GetPlusOnesGoogle.com
analyzer says:

March 28, 2012 at 2:16 pm

Thanks for sharing. I could run facebook and twitter but google code gives “Invalid Data” error?
seo says:

March 29, 2012 at 1:59 pm

Google+ doesn’t work. I think its not related with Google console settings.
Hairstyles Gallery says:

April 15, 2012 at 10:40 am

Thanks John, just what I needed. the google+ details were illusive elsewhere.
Anees says:

May 13, 2012 at 12:30 am

Thank you 🙂 Use full one
And now +1 is not working always zero
ahmadalli says:

May 25, 2012 at 2:39 am

this isn’t correct: var json = new System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize(jsonString); from googleplus method of c#. because Deserialize wanted two Arguments
1. Sam says:
  
  November 28, 2012 at 2:15 pm
  
  Hey were you guys to figure out how to parst the json response like you said
  var json = new System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize(jsonString);
  int count = json[url][“shares”];
  This doesn’t see to be working.
  1. saba says:
    
    December 3, 2013 at 1:10 am
    
    private int GetLikes(string url)
    {
    int number_of_likes = 0;
    dynamic value = “”;
    int count = 0;
    //object c;
    url = “EVOLVEIndia”;
    //using (WebClient client = new WebClient())
    //{
    string jsonString = new System.Net.WebClient().DownloadString(“https://graph.facebook.com/?ids=” + url);
    System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer obj1 = new System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer();
    Dictionary objDic = (Dictionary)obj1.Deserialize(jsonString);
    bool success = false;
    success = objDic.TryGetValue(“EVOLVEIndia”, out value);
    if (success)
    {
    success = value.TryGetValue(“likes”, out value);
    if (success)
    {
    number_of_likes = (int)value;
    }
    }
    return number_of_likes;
    }
    this code is working for facebook likes in c#
Pingback: Get count of +1 of a webpage in c# | appsgoogleplus.com
Neo says:

May 28, 2012 at 10:51 pm

Thanks! Now my G+ works..
e-devlet says:

May 30, 2012 at 12:16 pm

Thanks, I couldn’t run Google+ too with Asp.Net.
Neo how could you run it, can you share it pls.
devil says:

June 15, 2012 at 10:03 pm

Well as for Google Plus
same url
on a Google Pages of My web site i get 5 likes !
But with this code i get 2 shares?
How can i get a page pluses – likes
Bibhuti says:

July 1, 2012 at 10:58 am

Thanks, very useful post. Do you have php code to get “pin it” count?
Thanks,
Bibhuti
Sunny says:

April 22, 2013 at 12:43 am

i have add four more functions to get Linkedin share, delicious bookmarks, Pinterest share, stumbleupon view
check this http://toolspot.org/script-to-get-shared-count.php
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