vine-oembed-metadata-recovery

Vine oEmbed Metadata Recovery

Problem

Vine.co pages no longer render content — the SPA shell loads but the backend API (archive-api.vineapp.com) returns 404, so pages just show a loading spinner. However, the oembed endpoint is still live and returns structured metadata for any valid Vine URL.

Context / Trigger Conditions

• You have Vine URLs in the format vine.co/v/{shortcode}
• The Vine page shows only a loading spinner (SPA shell loads, API calls fail)
• archive-api.vineapp.com/timelines/posts/s/{shortcode} returns 404
• You need to identify which creator made a specific Vine
• You need to map Vine shortcodes to Vine user IDs

Solution

Single Lookup

Query the oembed endpoint:

GET https://vine.co/oembed.json?url=https://vine.co/v/{SHORTCODE}

Response Fields

The oembed response provides:

• author_name — Vine username (e.g., "Kenrealdihboss")
• author_url — Profile URL containing the Vine user ID (e.g., https://vine.co/u/1306031740015583232)
• title — Post description/caption
• thumbnail_url — 480x480 thumbnail (may still resolve on Vine CDN)
• thumbnail_width / thumbnail_height — Always 480x480
• width / height — Embed dimensions (600x600)
• html — Iframe embed code
• provider_name — "Vine"
• type — "video"
• version — "1.0"
• cache_age — Cache duration in seconds

Extract User ID

The Vine numeric user ID is in the author_url path:

author_url: "https://vine.co/u/1306031740015583232"
→ user_id: 1306031740015583232

Bulk Recovery Pattern

If you have a list of Vine shortcodes (from Wayback CDX crawls, social media embeds, etc.):

import requests
import time

def get_vine_oembed(shortcode):
    url = f"https://vine.co/oembed.json?url=https://vine.co/v/{shortcode}"
    resp = requests.get(url, timeout=10)
    if resp.status_code == 200:
        data = resp.json()
        user_id = data.get("author_url", "").split("/u/")[-1]
        return {
            "shortcode": shortcode,
            "username": data.get("author_name"),
            "user_id": user_id,
            "title": data.get("title"),
            "thumbnail_url": data.get("thumbnail_url"),
        }
    return None

# Rate-limit to be respectful
for shortcode in shortcodes:
    result = get_vine_oembed(shortcode)
    if result:
        print(f"{result['shortcode']} → {result['username']} (ID: {result['user_id']})")
    time.sleep(0.5)

Cross-Reference with Database

Once you have the user ID, look up in the divine.video database:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = '1306031740015583232';
SELECT * FROM outreach_contacts WHERE user_id = '1306031740015583232';

Verification

curl -s "https://vine.co/oembed.json?url=https://vine.co/v/iLrDJJWn9e6" | python3 -m json.tool

Should return JSON with author_name, author_url, title, thumbnail_url, etc.

Sources of Vine Shortcodes

• Wayback Machine CDX API: http://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=vine.co/v/*&output=json
• Embedded Vine tweets on Twitter/X
• Reddit posts linking to vine.co/v/
• Tumblr embeds (many Vine creators cross-posted)
• Blog posts and news articles embedding Vines

Notes

• The oembed endpoint appears to be served separately from the main Vine API infrastructure, which is why it survived while everything else died
• Thumbnail CDN URLs from oembed may or may not still resolve — worth checking
• This works for individual Vine posts but NOT for user profile lookups
• The author_url format vine.co/u/{numeric_id} gives you the same user ID used in the divine.video database's users and imported_users tables
• Be respectful with rate limits — this endpoint is still running and we don't want to overwhelm it