README
¶
baidu-cli
A command line for Baidu. One pure-Go binary, no API key.
baidu hot # realtime hot search board, in rank order
baidu hot --tab movie -n 10 # top 10 movie searches
baidu suggest golang # typeahead suggestions for a query
baidu hot -o json # JSON output
baidu hot | jq # JSONL piped to jq
baidu reads Baidu (百度) through its public surfaces: the hot search board,
the typeahead suggest API, web search results, and the Baike (百度百科)
encyclopedia. It returns records as a table, JSON, JSONL, CSV, TSV, or URLs,
and serves the same operations over HTTP and MCP. Output is a table at a
terminal and JSONL when piped, so baidu hot | jq works with no flags.
Install
Homebrew
brew install tamnd/tap/baidu
Pre-built binaries
Download from Releases.
Go
go install github.com/tamnd/baidu-cli/cmd/baidu@latest
Docker
docker run --rm ghcr.io/tamnd/baidu:latest hot
Commands
Read operations work from the CLI, over HTTP (baidu serve), and over MCP
(baidu mcp).
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
hot |
Baidu hot search board, in rank order (-t/--tab realtime|novel|movie|teleplay|car) |
suggest <query> |
Typeahead suggestions for a query |
search <query> |
Web search results (walled, best effort) |
article <ref> |
Full detail for one Baike encyclopedia article |
categories <tag> |
Lemma stubs under Baike category tags |
The mirror subsystem is a CLI-only escape hatch: a stateful, resumable crawl of Baike into a local SQLite store. It is not exposed over HTTP or MCP.
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
seed topics |
Seed the built-in Baike seed topics (or category tags) into the queue |
seed url <ref>... |
Seed explicit topics or lemma ids |
seed list <file> |
Seed topics or lemma ids from a file, one per line |
crawl |
Crawl pending queue items into the mirror |
export |
Export mirrored records as JSONL or Markdown |
info |
Show mirror location, counts, and disk usage |
queue |
Inspect queue rows by status |
jobs |
Show the crawl job log, newest first |
reset-failed |
Requeue failed queue rows for another crawl |
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
serve |
Serve the operations over HTTP (NDJSON) |
mcp |
Run as an MCP server over stdio |
version |
Print version information |
The suggest query is positional now (baidu suggest golang), not a flag.
Anti-bot
Baidu walls some surfaces by IP and region. The tool is honest about this: it recognises each block signal and exits cleanly rather than emitting a CAPTCHA page or faking data.
- Open anywhere, no key:
hotandsuggest. - Walled behind a CAPTCHA:
search. From a datacenter or flagged IP it bounces, and the command exits with code 5 (rate limited) and a hint to pass a real--baiduidcookie. A real BAIDUID improves the odds but is not guaranteed. Best effort. - Geo-walled:
articleandcategories(Baike). They answer fully from China IPs and return blocks from elsewhere. A block reads as exit 5, a genuinely empty result as exit 3. The wall is at the IP/region layer, not an auth wall, so no cookie or token the client could send will open it. The mirror crawler depends on Baike being reachable, so from a non-China IPcrawlrecords each fetch as blocked rather than producing records.
License
Apache-2.0. baidu-cli is an independent tool and is not affiliated with
Baidu, Inc.
Directories
¶
| Path | Synopsis |
|---|---|
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Package baidu is the library behind the baidu command: the HTTP clients, request shaping, anti-bot handling, parsers, and typed data models for Baidu.
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Package baidu is the library behind the baidu command: the HTTP clients, request shaping, anti-bot handling, parsers, and typed data models for Baidu. |
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Package cli builds the baidu command tree on top of the baidu library and the any-cli/kit framework.
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Package cli builds the baidu command tree on top of the baidu library and the any-cli/kit framework. |
|
cmd
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baidu
command
Command baidu is the single-binary command line for baidu-cli.
|
Command baidu is the single-binary command line for baidu-cli. |
|
mirror
|
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|
crawl
Package crawl runs the Baidu mirror: it drains the queue, fetches each item (a Baike lemma or a web search page) through the baidu client, stores the raw bytes and a parsed record, expands the related lemmas it discovers, and marks every row's outcome.
|
Package crawl runs the Baidu mirror: it drains the queue, fetches each item (a Baike lemma or a web search page) through the baidu client, stores the raw bytes and a parsed record, expands the related lemmas it discovers, and marks every row's outcome. |
|
store
Package store is the persistence layer for the Baidu mirror: a crawl queue, a visited set, the harvested records (Baike articles, search results, suggest queries), the per-run job log, and the raw artifact files captured verbatim.
|
Package store is the persistence layer for the Baidu mirror: a crawl queue, a visited set, the harvested records (Baike articles, search results, suggest queries), the per-run job log, and the raw artifact files captured verbatim. |