# Commentary data retrieval from the API

**URL:** <https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/commentary-data-retrieval-from-the-api/78908>\
**Category:** Educators\
**Tags:** question, python, information\
**Created:** [May 13, 2026, 3:04am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/commentary-data-retrieval-from-the-api/78908 "2026-05-13T03:04:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![masontf08](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dc4da7/32.png) [@masontf08](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/masontf08)\
**Post date:** [May 13, 2026, 3:04am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/commentary-data-retrieval-from-the-api/78908/1 "2026-05-13T03:04:46Z")

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I am a student researching commentary data of citizen science platforms and was wondering if anyone had any insight into retrieving comments (observational message conversations) from specific observations. I have attempted to do this but keep getting denied authorisation and error 401 even with an API key.

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**Author:** ![wy\_bio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/4491bb/32.png) [@wy\_bio](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/wy_bio)\
**Post date:** [May 13, 2026, 3:20am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/commentary-data-retrieval-from-the-api/78908/2 "2026-05-13T03:20:09Z")

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Can you post a link to an observation with comments that you want to retrieve?

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**Author:** ![masontf08](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dc4da7/32.png) [@masontf08](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/masontf08)\
**Post date:** [May 13, 2026, 3:24am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/commentary-data-retrieval-from-the-api/78908/3 "2026-05-13T03:24:33Z")

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I have just found my solution and I’m kicking myself. I was using the pprint() function on the response to make my observation information readable, but it also removes about 95% of the information retrieved. Just need to use the get\_observations() method and it has all the info.