How to Extract and Visualize WeChat Friend Data with Python itchat

Preface

This blog post is the third article in the itchat library series and focuses on obtaining WeChat friends' region, gender, and signature information and visualizing the results.

Main Content

Getting Friend Information with itchat

Use the following two lines of code:

<ol><li><code>itchat.auto_login(hotReload=True)</code></li><li><code>friends = itchat.get_friends(update=True)</code></li></ol>

The first line logs into the WeChat web client; hotReload=True allows re‑login without scanning the QR code if the program restarts shortly after exiting. get_friends() returns a list of dictionaries, one per friend. Because the list is serializable, you can save it to a file with the json module:

<ol><li><code># Convert the JSON object to a string and save locally</code></li><li><code>with open("data.json", "w", encoding="utf-8") as f:</code></li><li><code>    f.write(json.dumps(friends, indent=2, ensure_ascii=False))</code></li></ol>

Sample output is shown below:

Extracting Data and Visualizing

Gender Visualization

Count gender values with the following loop:

<ol><li><code>for friend in friends:</code></li><li><code>    if friend["Sex"] == 0:</code></li><li><code>        unknow += 1</code></li><li><code>    elif friend["Sex"] == 1:</code></li><li><code>        male += 1</code></li><li><code>    else:</code></li><li><code>        female += 1</code></li></ol>

The resulting chart shows that male friends dominate while females account for about a quarter; "unknown" represents friends who have not set a gender.

Region Visualization

Collect province data with:

<ol><li><code>dic_province = dict()</code></li><li><code>for friend in friends:</code></li><li><code>    key = friend["Province"]</code></li><li><code>    if key not in dic_province:</code></li><li><code>        dic_province[key] = 1</code></li><li><code>    else:</code></li><li><code>        dic_province[key] += 1</code></li><li><code>key_list = []</code></li><li><code>value_list = []</code></li><li><code>for key, value in dic_province.items():</code></li><li><code>    if key == "":</code></li><li><code>        key = "其他地区"</code></li><li><code>    key_list.append(key)</code></li><li><code>    value_list.append(value)</code></li></ol>

The visualization reveals the distribution of friends across provinces, inadvertently exposing the author’s own location.

Signature (Signature) Visualization

Aggregate all signatures and filter out emojis before generating a word cloud:

<ol><li><code>all_sign = ""</code></li><li><code>for friend in friends:</code></li><li><code>    sign = friend["Signature"]</code></li><li><code>    if len(sign) > 0:</code></li><li><code>        emoji = re.findall("<span class=.*></span>", sign, re.S)</code></li><li><code>        if len(emoji) > 0:</code></li><li><code>            sign = sign.replace(emoji[0], "")</code></li><li><code>        all_sign = all_sign + sign + "
"</code></li><li><code>if os.path.exists("wc/sign.txt"):</code></li><li><code>    os.remove("wc/sign.txt")</code></li><li><code>with open("wc/sign.txt", "a+", encoding="utf-8") as f:</code></li><li><code>    f.write(all_sign)</code></li></ol>

The generated word cloud shows a group of enthusiastic friends discussing life.

Other Visualizations

Similar techniques can be applied to other friend attributes; details are omitted for brevity.

Running the Demo

Execute main.py in the project root to generate gender and region visualizations (see images above). If you haven’t logged in recently, the program will prompt you to scan the QR code.

To visualize signatures, run wc.py inside the wc folder. The word‑cloud background can be customized by replacing wc/image/bc.png with a solid‑color image.

All Source Code

Reply "微信好友" to the public account backend to obtain the full source.